


we might be hollow, but we're brave

by athenaeums



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 15x20 simply does not exist, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Canon Compliant, Getting Together, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Episode: s15e19 Inherit the Earth, how many synonyms for 'empty' can fit in one fic challenge, series finale? what series finale?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 13:27:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29760321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athenaeums/pseuds/athenaeums
Summary: Every time Sam asks him for more, for a better explanation, he finds himself bracing for impact, but he doesn’t know why. This is Castiel’s secret. And yet his insides scramble and his feet are ready to run because the dots connect themselves and he knows it and Castiel probably knew it, so he can only assume Sam does too. He leaves Sam behind, bewildered and confused in the kitchen, and doesn’t look back. This isn’t a conversation he’s having today. This isn’t a conversation heneedsto have ever.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 23
Kudos: 160





	we might be hollow, but we're brave

**Author's Note:**

> I intended this to be a 6k fix-it fic but they left us with so many loose threads and nonsensical conclusions that this turned into a 22k monster.
> 
> Anyway. Dean would never leave Castiel in the Empty without at least trying to do something, and that's the hill this fic and myself is choosing to die on.
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> ***
> 
> (p.s. title from 400 Lux by Lorde)
> 
> (p.p.s the Impala is a manual now because I don't know how to drive an automatic)

Dean slams his foot down on the clutch and shifts gear. The gearbox crunches and he presses on the gas before the clutch can scream at him as he raises it. The Impala races forward, dust billowing into the air all around. It’s sunset, and the Impala looks golden, coated in sand and dust and glowing. Dean races towards nothing, the road empty before him and nothing but fields either side.

He’s trying not to think.

He’s trying to get lost, somehow.

He presses for more gas until it sounds like the clutch is going to give out, and harshly switches gear again.

And then: foot hitting the brakes, clutch into the floor, gear shift, full lock steering, and finally… gas, gas, gas.

He smells the rubber burning and glances at the tyre tracks left in the road from the rear-view mirror.

“Sorry, baby,” he grumbles, pushing faster, but giving the steering wheel a gentle sweep. A small gesture of comfort.

He hasn’t seen a single person since he left the bunker and he’s had no one to listen to but Sam and all Sam wants to know is what happened to Castiel and there’s just nothing but grass and sand and fields and mountains and the sun is setting on the day.

Dean’s phone rings, Sam’s name flashing up on the screen. He grabs at it and throws it on the backseat without care.

He’s driving into the sunset and he can feel the burn. The sun is glaring through the windshield as he presses on the gas even more, and he imagines it swallowing him whole. What would be on the other side?

He blinks and Castiel is stood before him, silhouetted by the oranges and purples smearing across the sky.

So he presses on further, braces for impact, grits his teeth, and drives right on through him.

He doesn’t glance in the rear-view mirror, he doesn’t reverse, he keeps on. Hands on the steering wheel, foot on the gas, faster and faster and faster…

The engine growls.

He slams on the brakes.

With his head rested on top of the steering wheel, Dean sends another silent apology to the car and finally exhales.

He’s seeing him everywhere.

Fuck.

***

_The one thing I want… is something I know I can’t have._

Dean jolts from sleep and tries to rub the memory of Castiel’s last words from his mind the same way he rubs the night from his eyes.

They haunt him.

Awake or asleep, they’re always there. He hears Castiel’s voice as clear as day and every time, conscious or unconscious, dreaming or deep sleeping, it squeezes around his chest like a vice. The tightness has yet to subside.

Three days ago, Dean defeated Chuck. Defeated God. Left him in tatters, just a man, on the floor begging to die.

And yet the euphoria he was sure to feel is bittered by the loss of Jack, the temporary loss of all they loved, and the overwhelming loss of Castiel.

But Castiel isn’t really gone because Dean’s brain won’t let him be gone.

Dean sees Castiel in the dog gently grumbling at the end of his bed. He sees him every time he walks past room 7b, host to many an abomination and atrocity but none quite so sinister as the sight of the Shadow. Dean feels the warmth of Castiel's hands around the tumbler sitting next to the decanter of the whiskey he always pretended he enjoyed.

He sees him when he drives.

He sees him in his dreams.

He hears him, always.

Castiel isn’t going anywhere and yet when Dean’s fingertips itch to reach out and even just skim the edge of his ridiculous coat, or the palm of his hand, he finds nothing.

Miracle yelps, throws himself at a slightly-more-awake Dean and nestles under his chin. Dean holds him tight and tries once more to push it down, to focus on the life he has won. To live this life that Castiel died for.

_I love you._

And with a heavy sigh, the impossibility of something so simple makes itself known.

Dean pushes away his grief, paints on a smile and ignores the hollow taking over inside.

He’s just empty.

***

Sometimes Dean thinks he is coping. Sometimes, he wonders what Chuck is up to. Is he writing his memoirs? Is he still crawling around by the lake where they left him? Has someone taken pity on him? Sometimes he fills out job applications and fully intends to return them, and sometimes he orders his third pizza of the week and thinks of the freedom he has earned. The freedom that was promised.

And then, all the time, the pit in his stomach seems to grow.

The pit that he has shoved it all into but it’s not enough, it’s never full.

He’s trying to fill it up with beer and scotch and occasional nights swimming in tears, but nothing satisfies it.

 _I have a family_ , he told John once upon a time. At the time he was proud but now it just feels like a lie. He _had_ a family. He’s two angels and a mom short of the picture he had back then. This is supposed to be freedom, but it feels like it’s Chuck’s wet dream.

He wonders what would happen if Famine rolled into town now. Would it be true this time? That’s he’s empty inside? Or would the craving for something he can barely understand consume him until he flings himself into _the_ Empty?

Another burger slides down his throat, chased by beer after beer after beer… until his nightly mantra takes hold, whispered, almost like a prayer: screw you, Chuck.

He hopes he tried to swim.

And he hopes he drowned.

***

“What happened?”

Two weeks ago, Dean walked away from Chuck and started his life. His _own_ life according to _his_ rules.

“When?” he answers over the not-vegetarian-bacon he’s frying off as Sam nurses a coffee in the bunker’s kitchen.

“Cas,” Sam says, carefree. Like it doesn’t mean anything. Like the mere _thought_ of that name finding its shape in Dean’s mouth wouldn’t make him sick. “What happened? How did he summon the Empty?”

Dean pauses. Takes a breath.

“Doesn’t matter,” Dean exhales. “We wouldn’t be able to do it.”

Sam sighs and twists in his seat to lean against the wall and fix Dean with a look. Dean feels the chill on the back of his neck but pretends it’s not happening.

“He was my friend too, Dean,” Sam is gentle in his tone, but Dean hears the demand to just stop fucking around. It wouldn’t get to him so much, but Sam asked last week over a nightcap and tried to ask when they first defeated Chuck.

This isn’t a new subject, but it’s become the one Dean has mastered avoiding.

“I know,” Dean plates the bacon and hopes to… Jack that Sam can’t see the slight wobble of the pan in his hand.

“I know this isn’t easy,” Sam tries again, impossibly even more gentle than before. “But I don’t understand what happened and I feel like I can’t just move on or grieve. I don’t understand why there wasn’t another way.”

When Dean doesn’t answer, Sam puts his big boy pants on.

“I think it would help you to move on too,” he continues. “Last time he died, you-”

“Sam.”

“I have literally no one else to ask,” his tone chases desperation and Dean has to close his eyes. “Billie, the Empty, Cas, they’re all gone. You’re the only one who knows anything.”

There is a pause while Dean chokes down his breakfast and chases it with a beer that he barely remembers bringing to the table and he stares at the scratches and knocks that have marred the wood beneath his hands. He runs his fingertips over them, to just feel something. To feel anything. The wood catches against his skin and he breathes.

“He made a deal,” Dean’s voice is barely above a whisper. “He made a deal with the Empty to save Jack.”

“Okay,” Sam says, careful, but encouraging. “When?”

“When we were trying to bring Jack’s soul back,” Dean sighs.

Sam nods. “So why did it take him now?”

The ‘I don’t know’ is lingering on the tip of Dean’s tongue and it’s bitter and he wants to spit it out and end all of this. But he swallows it instead. Because Castiel was Sam’s friend too.

“The deal was that he had to allow himself to be truly happy or have a moment of true happiness or something, it’s kind of fuzzy,” a small lie that he allows himself out of courtesy for how this will plague his mind later in the day, through the night, how he won’t sleep or rest until it’s done its damage. He remembers everything with a striking clarity. He remembers the exact moment it started, and he remembers how it ended, and he remembers every word. The scene has taken up residence in his mind and it runs rampant like a plague, like a curse. It won’t leave him alone.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Sam is getting frustrated with him. Dean knows it’s fair, but Sam just cannot understand. He has no idea.

“Can you-” Dean stops. Breathes. “He made a deal to save Jack and we all know how well those work out for us. That’s all it is.”

_I never found an answer, because the one thing I want…_

He presses his finger into a deep scratch in the wood so hard it leaves an indent on his fingertip. If he does it again it might bruise. So, he does.

“No, that’s not good enough” Sam continues and Dean groans. “What? Dean, come on.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Sam.”

“What made him happy?”

_I love you._

“Hell if I know,” Dean lies one more time and takes his leave.

Every time Sam asks him for more, for a better explanation, he finds himself bracing for impact, but he doesn’t know why. This is Castiel’s secret. And yet his insides scramble and his feet are ready to run because the dots connect themselves and he knows it and Castiel probably knew it, so he can only assume Sam does too.

He leaves Sam behind, bewildered and confused in the kitchen, and doesn’t look back. This isn’t a conversation he’s having today. This isn’t a conversation he _needs_ to have ever.

Dean moves his fingers and catches the indent on his fingertip. He curls his fingers into the palm of his hand and presses hard, just to be sure of what it feels like. To be sure of feeling anything at all.

***

Dean is sleepwalking through this life that was supposed to be a gift, that was supposed to have been won. But for the first time in weeks, he can feel his soul gently stirring, waking. He’s ready to consider a way, consider their options. And then, utterly betrayed by his own mind, he thinks of Castiel in the Empty. Awake, probably. Alone, definitely. Reliving his worst memories, all of them Dean. And Dean is suddenly incensed.

“We need to try.”

He won’t live while Castiel is stuck in the dark.

He has to bring him back.

“To break into a cosmic space that we have no access to or any knowledge about?”

“Then we’ll get the knowledge.”

“And what you said about living so his sacrifice is worth it?”

Dean offers only silence.

“Dean?”

“Sam,” Dean sighs. “I can’t explain it, I don’t want to explain it. I just need to try, and I’d like you to help me.”

Sam fixes him with a look, half a raised eyebrow and the beginnings of a smirk, but it softens with a gentle nod, an “Okay,” and a stack of books almost as tall as Dean himself.

***

Days pass and pages turn, and the words all begin to look like Enochian. The Men of Letters knew about multiple universes, they knew how to cure a demon, they knew to ward against God and angels. But they don’t have a single mention of where an angel or demon goes when they die.

He’s buried in books and websites and he’s pulled the archive rooms apart for hours. He’s scoured room 7b to see if there was any trace of the Shadow left behind, even just a phantom hint of what had been, but all Dean finds is pain and a memory he’s trying hard to bury, for now. Because he has to. Because he can’t focus on the mission if he replays everything on a loop. There are no answers in Castiel’s final moments, only affirmation.

Dean tries to get Sam to check Castiel’s room but he’s always ‘too busy’ or ‘chasing a lead’ that never goes anywhere, so eventually he has to do it himself.

The room is as sparse as it always has been. The bed is made, barely slept on. The wardrobe empty, personal items never there to be missed and not a single thing that indicates the room has ever been used, let alone occupied for several years.

Until Dean checks the nightstand.

He throws open the drawers, ready to give in. Almost ready to give up completely.

And there at the top, he finds Castiel’s face staring back at him. Stoic, calm and handsome. The picture sits on one of the many fake ID cards Dean made him. He feels it like a stab in his stomach. He’s winded and he might be bleeding but who cares… it’s one thing to remember the moment Castiel told him that he loves him, of everything he’s ever thought of him, but it’s another to see his face so clearly. To remember every part of his features, the ones he chose to keep for many years. The ones he chose to keep while he stayed with Dean.

Dean closes his eyes for a moment and steels himself. He allows himself to run his thumb over the photo, carefully, gently, like a promise, before he pushes it back into the drawer.

He tries to stay on mission when he spots the mixtape. In a room so devoid of anything, Dean doesn’t know what to expect. It hits him harder than the ID card as he remembers the hours he spent making it – recording, pausing, rewinding, recording, no- made a mistake, rewind, start again, record – just so Castiel had a little piece of Dean with him when he wasn’t around, when he was venturing on his own to both help and fight angels. He didn’t think that Castiel knew what it meant for Dean to make it, the hours he spent gearing up to give it to him, the many playlists he wrote out and edited and discarded but here it lives, in the only space Castiel ever really had to call home. Here it sits amongst his incredibly few personal items, now a relic, a headstone of who he was and the space he occupied in Dean’s life.

He pockets the mixtape and leaves the room hastily, locking the door behind him.

Castiel can have the room back when he comes back.

Because he has to come back.

***

Research is hard and Dean all but gives up. Beer starts his day. Whiskey ends it. Over and over, between rounds of bacon and burgers and pizza and cartoons and hunts so easy he wonders if the people they’re trying to save couldn’t have just done it themselves. The books lay over the library tables, the kitchen table, in stacks around Dean’s room and in the moments when he’s feeling even just a speck of hope, he might look in them one more time, one last time, just one more read-through…

But Sam still wants to go chasing monsters, clinging to some idea that this will bring Dean back to life, will drag him away from the books, that this will take away the memory of being healed, grace running through and over his injuries, of seeing a trenchcoat in his peripheral, the sound of wings from many moons ago. But Dean is still only interested in chasing one monster. He just doesn’t know if it’s him or if it’s Nothing.

And so, with a heavy sigh, a full hip flask and a trunk full of clean and ready weapons, Dean drags himself to another vampire nest, another pack of werewolves, another vengeful spirit, another, another, another… Sam is thriving, Dean is wilting, the monsters keep on dying. They have absolutely no leads on how to get to the Empty. And so, everything _is_ empty.

Except one day, Sam encounters rare demonic activity.

“We haven’t seen a demon in months, I thought Rowena had them on a tight leash down there?” Sam thinks aloud.

“You sure it’s a demon?” There’s a hope barely beginning to bloom deep in Dean’s chest. When you kill a demon, there is only one place they end up.

“This man says he’s been experiencing blackouts for days at a time and the allegations against him,” Sam laughs a little. “Orgies, excessive drinking, bar fights, murder in dark alleys, and an altar behind the church with blood all over it.”

“Just your regular Friday night,” Dean smiles a little, but it doesn’t quite make it all the way.

“The man is a pastor,” Sam is both enthused and amused. “I’m not sure he would agree.”

“Let’s see if we can’t get him back on his holy path,” Dean is out of the door and in the garage before Sam has finished his coffee. Dean pretends not to notice Sam’s raised eyebrow, concerned glances across the Impala, and general confusion. He just doesn’t want to talk about it. He honestly doesn’t think he ever can.

But Sam does.

“Are you sure we can’t call someone else to do this? It’s just an exorcism.”

“No, it’s not,” Dean sighs, exasperated, ready to get in the car and just _go_.

“What is this really about?”

“What?”

“This is about bringing Cas back, right?” Sam starts, slowly. But Dean’s not an idiot. “We’ve lost countless people we couldn’t bring back. We clean up, we move on. Charlie, mom, dad, Rowena… you just can’t do it when it’s him.”

“What are you talking about?” Dean is losing his patience and he can feel the anger building in his chest. He doesn’t want to blow up at Sam today. He doesn’t really want to ever do it but, god, not today. Not when they have a glimmer of something like hope ahead of them. “I think I remember burning his body, having a fucking funeral, Sam. I was there.”

“Sure, yes, but what about with Lucifer? The Leviathan?”

“What are you trying to say?” Dean snaps. “Just say it. Come on. Lay it on me.”

And so, Sam does.

“Do you love him?”

And Dean’s heart just about stops.

“What?” he asks quietly, trying to make his voice sound stronger than he feels.

“You heard me.” Sam sticks to his guns, refuses to move. He straightens up where he stands and looks Dean in the eyes and… Dean feels so _seen_. But so misunderstood.

“He’s family, Sam.”

“Yeah, I agree,” Sam nods, but he’s not ready to give up. “But so is mom, and dad. Jack, even. You know that’s not what I’m talking about.”

“We’re wasting time here,” Dean flings open the driver side door and throws himself into his seat. His heart is hammering in his chest, his palms are starting to feel clammy, but his head feels like a whole load of cotton wool. He’s just fuzzy. Bile begins to rise from his stomach and god, why can’t Sam just _let it go_? He starts the ignition and revs the engine as Sam idly makes his way into the car.

“Well,” Sam breaks the silence, permeated only by the low grumble of the Impala’s engine. “Do you?”

Dean revs louder than before and shifts the car into gear. It’s performative and ridiculous, but if it will shut Sam up… though it doesn’t. And Sam is twisted in the passenger seat staring down the side of Dean’s face so hard it begins to burn.

“It doesn’t matter!” Dean eventually explodes. “My feelings or whatever, none of it matters. What does matter is that he is stuck in the middle of God knows what probably living out his worst nightmares every single day and we might have a shot at saving him, bringing him home. I want you with me on this, but I’ll do it on my own if I have to.”

“And I am with you, Dean. I am. I want him home too. But-”

“Then let’s go.”

Dean floors the gas pedal and tears from the bunker faster and angrier than he needs to. He doesn’t stop until he can’t see the bunker in the rearview mirror anymore, like all his feelings and thoughts are held up in their little fortress. If he just drives fast enough and far enough, maybe they’ll go away, just vanish in the distance as the bunker slides from view.

Within an hour of arriving, they have the pastor in a devil’s trap and holy water to hand. It’s old school. They haven’t done this in a while, but Dean feels the thrill, even now. Maybe this _is_ paradise. Maybe this is Dean’s ‘simple life’. Maybe this is what he has been yearning for ever since an angel walked into his life and told him he was part of an impending apocalypse.

Sam starts the exorcism, not completely, but just enough to cause pain. To make the fucker squirm.

“Tell me how to get to the Empty!” Dean yells. He’s already asked five times and the demon hasn’t budged. The answers are all the same: Dean is only human. Dean can’t do anything. Dean is useless.

“Look, Dean,” the demon smirks. “I can call you Dean, right?”

Dean throws some holy water in the demon’s face, but they laugh through the burn.

“Got it,” they continue to laugh. “The Shadow would consume you as soon as you arrived, why bother? I’m just looking out for you, buddy.”

The demon drags the ‘buddy’ out to an absurd length and its mocking, and it hurts. _Cas, buddy, I need you_ tears into Dean’s chest and forces his hand to drive the demon blade clean into the abomination sat before him.

“Come on, you son of a bitch! Come and get him!” Dean yells into nothing and sure enough nothing happens. The demon is dead. The pastor too. And the Shadow continues to hide in the safety of the Empty.

“Dean,” Sam says quietly, eventually. “How are we going to explain this?”

Dean can’t look at the body, at the innocent person he knows they should have tried to save. The demon had been toying with the pastor, hopping in and out of the vessel at their leisure. It was firmly in their grasp to return him to his life but… Dean has tunnel-vision. He only sees darkness. He only sees Castiel.

The realisation washes over Dean instantly. It wraps him up and holds him tight. He can barely see, he can barely understand. Why is he interrogating demons and shredding books looking for spells that don’t exist?

He knows he’s probably not getting Castiel back.

So what’s the point in all of this?

What’s the point in saving everyone else when he only wants to save one?

And why does it always have to be him?

This dead end has to be the last.

He turns to look at the pastor, at Sam, wary and cautious and nervous, and he just laughs.

“I can’t do this anymore, Sammy,” he says, dejected. “Hunting, demons, angels, all of it. I don’t want it.”

He throws the demon blade to the ground and leaves.

***

Dean doesn’t think Sam knows that he knows.

He doesn’t think Sam knows that sometimes he stands outside his bedroom door and hears him praying to Jack – sometimes earnestly, sometimes desperately.

It always starts the same – hi, how are you, I miss you, thank you – and it always ends the same – he’s lost, he won’t forgive himself, he needs this, please help us.

Dean pretends not to hear it because he knows no one is listening.

And if he thinks about the last time he spoke to Jack, the last time he saw him, and how he squandered it. He barely said goodbye to his kid. He barely recognised what it would mean.

He didn’t ask him to do anything.

Dean feels like he’s lost a limb. He’s flailing around, trying to adjust, but he has no reason to believe he can. He’s lost so many, his mom, Jack, C… but any semblance of faith that he ever considered himself to have has also vanished.

It doesn’t mean he’s forgotten how to pray though.

“Naomi,” he whispers, late into the night after his third beer. He’s got Cas’ mixtape playing in the stereo, graphic novels open on his laptop and he’s just had enough. Normality is a concept, it’s not real.

“Naomi, please,” he tries again, running his hand through his hair and using the other to brace himself against the edge of his bed. “I don’t think either of us thought this day would come but I’m praying to you. Please, if you can hear me, I just want to talk. I need to ask you something.”

Miracle stirs from his place at the foot of his bed and twitches his ears.

Dean waits for a moment, maybe not long enough, before giving up. She’s not listening. No one is listening. He scratches Miracle between the ears and accepts him crawling across the bed to flop in Dean’s lap.

“I guess it’s just you and me, then.” Dean smiles, offering one last bit of fuss before going back to his comics.

It’s just as he’s drifting that Miracle decides to leap up and cock his head at the corner of the room. Dean’s laptop screen flickers slightly, the tape skips and the lights go out momentarily.

“Dean,” Naomi’s business-as-usual voice answers quietly. “This _is_ a surprise.”

“Naomi?” Her vessel is the same as it always has been. There is no confusion about who he is looking at.

“Were you expecting someone else?” she tries for humour but as with most angels, it falls flat. “You said you needed to ask me something?”

“I wasn’t actually expecting to see you,” Dean smirks. “Heard upstairs put you under lock and key.”

“Yes,” she agrees. “And then your Nephilim arrived and decided I was more useful elsewhere. I happened to agree.”

Dean is halfway through processing how significant this contact is, how much of a potential lead he has in his hands right now, when he cuts himself off and gets to it. Naomi doesn’t want to hang around and neither does Dean.

“I need to know how to get into the Empty,” he says. He hasn’t moved from his bed and he’s still in his t-shirt and boxers. Miracle is still curious, wagging his tale cautiously but overwhelmingly interested. Naomi doesn’t even look at him. She only laughs.

“You can’t,” she says, as though it really is that simple. “Is that all?”

“Don’t lie to me, Naomi,” Dean says carefully. “Or I swear-”

“What?” she taunts. “What are you doing to do? Got an angel blade tucked under your pillow? Or are you going to set your dog on me?”

“Naomi, please,” he’s aware of how much it sounds like he’s begging, but he won’t. Not even for this. Not to an angel. Not to _this_ angel.

“Dean,” Naomi softens slightly, but it’s barely noticeable. “The only way into the Empty is to die as an angel or a demon, and there’s no way out. Only one angel has ever managed it on his own.”

“Cas,” Dean finally whispers his name, and it feels like a heart attack.

“I don’t think you fully understand what was happening when Castiel made his absurd arrangement with the Shadow, but I won’t risk Heaven again. I won’t risk any more angels for a cause barely worthy of consideration. Your constant fight to have Castiel return to you, or you to him, is over, Dean. You are merely a human and the Empty is beyond your reach,” she says with a tone that belies her intent. “I’m sorry but Castiel has served his purpose. Heaven can’t help you.”

Dean blinks and she’s gone, with a sound he hasn’t heard in a long, long time.

The chest pains don’t subside.

Miracle jumps back onto the bed and nestles under Dean’s chin, nuzzling into his chest, but Dean finds no comfort in it.

It’s one failure after another. One dead end followed by another failed lead followed by the next snarky angel or demon _taunting_ him, _torturing_ him, with something he’s never spoken aloud, barely dared to even think about.

***

Dean is serious about not hunting anymore – at least not until Castiel has been found and brought home. Sam tries to get him to engage, tries to find cases that will grab his attention, but Dean builds the piles of books higher and seeks out more weird and wonderful ingredients for various experimental spells.

So, Sam joins in with the spells. He tries to speak to Rowena, with no luck. He visits her apartment, with even less luck.

It makes a horrific kind of sense that Castiel would sacrifice himself to the one place that no one had ever heard of, and no one knew about until they got there. It makes a sick karmic sense that Castiel’s final moments have doomed Dean to a mission he can’t possibly fulfil, to a point of no return. It’s almost nihilistic but Dean thinks he deserves it.

Between Sam trying more spells, and Dean hunting down ingredients he’s never heard of before, lies _you’re dead to me_ and _no one cares if you’re broken,_ playing like a stuck record. Every angry outburst, every torment, every time he made sure Castiel heard everything he didn’t really mean. As another spell fails to materialise anything, he can’t do anything but know that this is his ending. This is how he wins, doomed to live out his past mistakes and his current regrets. Just like the Empty. And it’s fucking awful.

***

Sam starts hunting with Eileen full-time and Dean spends his days in the Dean Cave – bad television, cartoons, drinking beer, replenishing the beer, cheap snacks, occasional porn, bad television… and so on. But none of it helps. None of it satisfies the need to stop hunting, nothing vindicates the feeling that none of it is worth it anymore.

“Jack,” he whispers from his recliner one day. “I don’t know if you can hear me, but just thought I’d say hi.”

He pauses, but everything is as it was.

“We miss you, kid,” he musters a small smile. “I miss you.”

Still, nothing.

“I know Sam prays to you sometimes and I know he’s worried but I’ve gotta be honest with you, buddy, this isn’t the paradise I thought we were getting. Doesn’t really look like the brochure. I mean it’s perfect because Chuck is… wherever Chuck is, but.”

A breath. Butterflies flying madly in his stomach. And then he remembers that his kid is God now, so he probably already knows. And that’s what confession is, right? Admitting to the things that God already knows and sees so you can clear your record before it’s time to go upstairs?

“I miss him, Jack,” Dean sighs, brings a bottle to his lips and takes more than he should. “But you know that because you were there last time I lost- we lost him. It’s not paradise until he gets to be in it too. So, if you can do _anything_ , if you know _anything_ … you gotta help us out, Jack. I can’t just leave him there. I won’t leave him there. You know I hate doing this, but just point me in the right direction, man. Please. I just need _something_.”

But as ever, he waits, and he gets nothing.

Nothing but a curious glance from Miracle where he’s curled up on the other chair when Dean’s bottle smashes into the wall.

***

The smashed bottle has been cleaned but Dean carries Miracle from the room, just in case he hurts his paws, and dumps him unceremoniously onto his bed. He doesn’t want to be alone and if the best he can hope for is a warm, lazy cuddle with the last dog in the world, then he’ll take it.

When he returns to the room with a beer and his laptop, he stops dead in his tracks.

Because Miracle isn’t on the bed anymore, he’s on the floor. He’s curled up asleep on Dean’s jacket.

But it’s Dean’s jacket that is buried in the back of his wardrobe. The jacket that he bagged up into an old backpack and buried under mountains of other crap. The one he can’t bear to look at.

Miracle wakes and lifts his head with a slight grumble. Under his paw sits Castiel’s handprint, bloody and stained, but still so clear.

“Jack,” Dean finally manages to whisper. “What the fuck?”

***

“Eileen and I have been looking into restoring the bunker without needing magic,” Sam announces over dinner one day, half signing what he can for Eileen’s benefit.

“Great,” Dean mumbles through a mouthful of fries.

Sam takes a breath and Dean doesn’t miss the glance to Eileen. He swallows, and braces.

“One of the scanners picked up recent angel activity in the bunker,” Sam says slowly, cautiously. “Do you know what that’s about?”

“Nope,” Dean lies but Naomi’s disappointing visit is playing like a movie before his eyes.

“Are you sure?” Sam tries, but it’s not quite enough.

“Yes, Sammy, I’m sure,” he sighs. “You know how I feel about those sons-of-bitches.”

The lie stings to tell and he’s sure it hurts Sam to hear it. Because he was supposed to have learnt this lesson. It never did them any good, it never helped their cause. It was only a wedge that was getting harder to remove the more he did it. And yet admitting to Naomi’s visit? Admitting that he asked for help, that he sought out something he loathed and got nothing? It wasn’t worth acknowledging.

“We found something that can restore the warding to it’s full potential,” Eileen says and Dean knows that’s not the end of it. “If angels are getting in undetected then it’s not safe.”

The end of the point is hanging in the air, unsaid, but Dean feels it as his heart beats faster, as his breathing becomes slightly more laboured. As his fist clenches and he simply says nothing.

“I think we should restore the angel warding, Dean,” Sam says, more confident than he was when he started.

“No.”

“Dean-” Sam rolls his eyes.

“What about Jack?” Because somehow, Dean can’t just say what he really means. Even now, with his heart on the floor and any paradise locked far away where he can’t reach it, he can’t just say what he’s really thinking, what really matters. “You want to lock him out?”

Sam sighs. So does Eileen.

“He’s a bit more than an angel, he’ll be fine,” Sam insists.

“We’re not doing it,” Dean stands, grabs his now-empty plate and makes to wash it up. End of discussion. Pointless discussion to have in the first place. But then, suddenly and without permission:

“If Cas comes back, we’ll remove it.”

Sam is staring at the elephant in the room and begging Dean to look at it, but the elephant is crushing Dean clear as day in a room with an audience, where he can’t bear to feel vulnerable. He drops the plate in the sink and makes for the doorway.

“When he comes back.”

And he leaves without another word.

When he gets to his room, Miracle dutifully follows. As he leaps onto Dean’s bed, he brings the jacket with him. Dean’s breath catches as he looks down at the handprint, now draped carelessly over his leg. He can’t take his eyes off of it, the one he would recognise anywhere. The one he’s pretty sure is still branded on his soul.

And then he pushes it aside and wonders why Miracle brought it back to him at all.

There is no good reason why.

And then he’s angry.

Because it feels like a cruel trick. It feels like Jack getting his final laugh. And god, Dean deserves it. He feels the guilt every day and he wants to scream when he thinks of how close he was to losing Jack altogether out of his misguided, desperate rage.

“Good job, Jack,” Dean prays, mostly to himself. “Are you happy now?”

Dean knows this mission is hopeless and they have no leads and no one willing to help. But he can’t stop looking for a way. He was fighting for their freedom? Their peace? Their paradise? Chuck never wanted him to have it at all.

_“They all did what they were told! But not you, not the one off the line with the crack in his chassis.”_

Because this life now? It’s doomed to repeat itself. Castiel isn’t coming back, but he’ll leave the bunker open for him. Castiel isn’t coming back, but Dean is keeping his mixtape, his badge, and curating them like he’s running a museum. Castiel isn’t coming back, but Dean is going to take every opportunity to just try because what is this life he fought so hard for if his happy ending is left in the dust?

“I need something more than this, Jack,” Dean tries again. “You got to give me more.”

He hangs the jacket from a hook on the wall, like a tapestry of where his life started and where it’s going to end.

***

It takes another three days of poring over encyclopaedias, articles, research logs, journals, and Sam hunting, before they finally get a nudge in the right direction.

Dean doesn’t know any other life right now. He has job applications waiting to be filled on his desk, beds that need to be made, laundry that needs to be put away. But it all seems so tiny, so insignificant, in the face of his real purpose.

He’s scanning the pages of a study on demons, specifically how they die, when the lights begin to flash in the library room. Sam looks up from one of Rowena’s spell books to take notice when the map table begins to flash, and the lights switch to red. Dean immediately grabs his gun and Sam grabs one of the weapons on display. The tables begin to shake, and books fall from the shelves.

And then it stops.

Suddenly, in the quiet, a lightning bolt hits the floor in front of the rarely used telescope and from the dust, Jack emerges.

“Hello,” is all he says, as he smiles and offers a tiny wave.

“Jack?” Sam questions cautiously.

“Yeah,” Jack grins. “It’s me.”

“Thought you’d put on a show for us?” Dean grumbles, putting the gun down and scanning the mess. But it hardly matters, because before Jack can even form a response Dean has pulled him into a hug. Dean knows it’s insane, but he’s still their kid. He’s still Castiel’s kid.

Jack snaps his fingers, and the bunker is immaculate once again.

“It’s so good to see you!” Sam exclaims, patting Jack on the back and pulling him into a quick one-armed hug. “So… how’s it going?”

Dean raises an eyebrow at Sam and sighs. “‘How’s it going?’, Sam? Really?”

Sam shrugs his shoulders and thankfully, Jack laughs. It’s good that he laughs because Dean’s mind has come back to itself and he’s going a mile a minute wondering why Jack is here. Why is Jack, the new God, stood before them? Why has he finally answered their prayers after weeks of nothing? He can’t help it, he’s not ready to embrace a life where he doesn’t have to worry about cosmic consequences, but he holds his head high and prepares to hear whatever cosmic disaster awaits. Because this isn’t paradise. There’s no way it can be.

“I need to talk with Dean,” Jack smiles, manages to throw Sam an apologetic glance, but fixes his gaze on Dean. And it’s unsettling. Dean helped raise him, he was there for his first few months when his own mother and chosen father couldn’t be. But the intensity with which he looks at Dean now? It’s bigger than Chuck. It’s bigger even than Amara. Dean wonders if he should be falling to his knees and praying right now.

Jack promises to stay for at least a beer before Sam is ready to leave them and Dean is nervous. This isn’t in the script. This isn’t what was promised.

“So what’s going on, kid?” he cringes as he says it. He’s not a kid, not really. Not anymore. He’s not going to be trying to get Dean to watch Star Wars with him, begging for another chance to drive the Impala, matching his clothes to Castiel whenever he can because he looks up to him so damn much. He’s… something else now.

“I heard your prayers, and I’ve been watching over you,” he says, so earnestly, so unintentionally. Dean feels it deep inside, wonders if Jack knows just how alike Castiel he really is. If he so much as tilts his head, Dean’s going to be a wreck. _I’ll watch over you_ plays like a never-ending memory, never-ending torture.

“Oh yeah?” Dean tries to smile, tries to will away the embarrassment of being heard, of being seen. “See anything good?”

“No.”

So there it is.

“Sorry if we’re not entertaining enough for you,” Dean laughs but it’s not funny. “I’m sure you can get cable upstairs if you’re bored.”

“You don’t understand,” Jack tries again. “I’m not supposed to be watching over _you_. I’m supposed to watch over _everything_ , but I can’t focus on _everything_ because of _you_. You’re not at peace, Dean.”

Dean’s blood runs cold and he steels himself. He nods, calmly.

“Sure I am,” he tries not to sneer but it’s near impossible. “Look at paradise, Jack. Look at it. Who needs you or Cas or my mom or anyone, really? Just me, Sammy and the damn dog. Life is perfect.”

Throughout the whole conversation, Jack gives him nothing, but he has the decency to frown at the mention of Mary. At least there’s something still earthly about him, Dean thinks. There’s still a scrap of the kid left.

“Why didn’t you ask me?”

“Ask you what?”

“To bring him back,” Jack takes a seat now. He’s sitting where Castiel sat when Dean toasted to him being right, about Jack. And he looks just like him – tan coat, blue jeans, his face. He’s every inch Castiel’s child and for a second, Dean can’t breathe.

And he doesn’t have an answer that will satisfy anyone.

“You said you were hands-off,” Dean lies. “And I listened.”

“Dean,” Jack admonishes. “You know I can tell when you’re not being truthful.”

And Dean just laughs.

“I know,” he sighs, with a gentler smile. “Good things don’t always happen to me and I guess I knew it would be too easy to ask. I didn’t realise we had so little time left with you.”

“You’re right,” Jack nods. “I couldn’t do it. I tried but The Empty is beyond my reach.”

“Join the club,” and finally, Dean joins him and sits down. He pours them both a glass and wonders what on earth Castiel would think if he could see his three-year-old drinking whiskey in the morning.

“But I have a way that _you_ can,” Jack raises his glass to a toast, failing to understand toasting etiquette but seeming to understand Dean perfectly. Because that is exactly what he would raise a glass to. That’s exactly what he needs to be celebrating.

With almost no air in his lungs, he chokes a little and sits a little straighter.

“What?” he asks, as eloquently as he can manage, tipping his glass to Jack’s in an absurd celebration of the impossible.

“I know how you feel about my father,” Jack starts, and Dean honestly thinks he’s going to vomit. How can Jack know? He barely understands it himself. “But he taught Nick how to summon someone from the Empty.” …Lucifer. He means Lucifer.

“Yeah, I remember but I thought that spell died with him,” but Dean also remembers what happened after Nick died and his tone drifts into tense. He doesn’t want to do this. He doesn’t want to be angry with Jack, not now. He can’t do it.

“I’ll give you the spell if you promise me you’ll let yourself be at peace, Dean,” Jack sounds tired, like this has genuinely agonised him. “We all fought for this and I need you to not waste it.”

But Dean can’t promise anything. He wants to, so badly. He wants to tell Jack he will live the happiest life and find joy in the mundane and get a real job, maybe a house with proper windows and ventilation, perhaps a garden for Miracle. But every time he thinks of it, Castiel is always by his side. And that terrifies him.

So he can’t make a promise based on false hope, and he won’t make a promise based on fear.

But he nods anyway. He agrees, because he’s desperate. Because Jack wouldn’t short-change him, and he wouldn’t set him up to fail. And he has to trust that, because what else does he have?

“I thought you could be happy knowing your life was yours, but I think I understand now that you need to share it,” Jack smiles, and he just says it. He just puts it right out there with no qualms while Dean feels like Jack’s hands are wrapped around his neck. “What happened to Castiel wasn’t right and I think I know now that this wrong needs to be righted before you can move on.”

Dean dares to look at him and sees the universe in Jack’s eyes. He sees the millennia of existence, creation and myriad worlds and stars. He sees paradise, and with the smallest glimmer of hope he finally wants in on it.

“Tell me what I need to do,” Dean insists.

And Jack does.

Within seconds he has a spell, ingredients, and a drive to succeed.

“I’ll bring him back, Jack,” Dean pulls Jack into another hug. “I promise.”

“I know,” Jack squeezes him back. “And you’ll make him happy. He deserves to be feel happy.”

That doesn’t sit so easily with Dean, doesn’t settle in his stomach the way he needs it to. But he can give his kid what he wants, one last time. “I’ll try,” is all he can muster but the way Jack smiles back makes it worth the effort.

***

Dean waits until Jack leaves before he brings it up with Sam.

“Jack has given me a way into the Empty,” Dean says into his bottle of beer, sitting in the kitchen while Sam clears away the empty bottles. Sam turns around with a start.

“What? How?” he immediately sits back down, his full attention on Dean.

“The spell Nick used, to get Lucifer back. It’s the same one.”

“How does that work to get Cas back? It’ll only summon Lucifer.”

“Yeah,” Dean sighs, and refuses to look Sam in the eye. “Except we don’t use Jack’s blood. We use Cas’. He’ll either be able to walk through or one of us goes in, I don’t know. But this is the only shot we have.”

Sam’s breathing changes slightly, there’s a hitch in his breath and his hands start tapping lightly on the table.

“Dean,” he says quietly. “This is insane.”

“But it’s the only way,” Dean finally looks up. “God approved!”

Sam nods, slowly, deep in thought. Dean can only imagine what he’s thinking, all they’ve been through and Dean is asking him to take yet another almighty risk, to walk right into the resting place of so many of their enemies. He’s a piece of shit for even bringing it up. He’s so selfish. He can’t ask Sam to do this, he can’t risk Lucifer or any of them walking free one more time. This is their happy ending and Dean wants to throw it all away for…

He wants to risk it for Castiel.

He’s _going_ to risk it for Castiel.

“Okay,” Sam eventually says, and Dean almost spits out his beer. “We should call in all the help we can in case the worst happens but yeah, okay.”

“Okay?” Dean questions, suspiciously. But Sam just nods. Sam gives him a look that borders on pitying and Dean can’t look back anymore. He can’t stomach being seen so clearly.

“Cas is my friend, he’s your best friend,” Sam explains, his tone more casual than his body is suggesting. “We’ve done worse for less.”

“You know I actually don’t know if we have,” Dean laughs miserably. “We might start another apocalypse.”

Dean’s not looking but he can feel Sam studying him. The room feels hollow and quiet. Nothing but Dean and Sam, Sam and Dean. And it’s wrong. Maybe ten years ago Dean could have only dreamt of this, but now? Without the family they built? It makes him feel sick and it makes him feel nothing.

“Eileen and I have been talking a lot lately,” Sam speaks into the silence, cautiously. “About where we see this thing we have going, the future, you know? That sort of thing?”

“Sounds kind of sappy if you ask me,” Dean manages a smile for Sam’s benefit. Oh, to have the luxury to dream.

“It is,” Sam agrees with a gentle laugh. “I want to make sure the choices I make include her. I don’t want to plan my future without her being in it.”

“Fuck,” Dean is suddenly wide-eyed. “Did you propose or something?”

Sam only laughs. “Not yet.”

“Not yet?” Dean is utterly bewildered. “So, you want to, in the future?”

“Yeah, maybe one day,” Sam confirms.

And suddenly it’s simple.

“I can’t ask you to do this,” and Dean has made up his mind.

“No, Dean, you don’t understand,” Sam tries, but Dean won’t let him.

“I can’t risk taking this from you, Sammy,” Dean tries to smile, tries to make it okay but he can’t. Because it isn’t, really. But what can he do? “She’s in the life, and she’s damn good at her job. And she loves you, man. Who else is going to understand you that way? If you see a future with her you should have it.”

Sam sighs and pulls the bottle away from Dean in a last-ditch effort to grab his full attention.

“I am going to do this spell for you,” he says, stopping Dean from interrupting when he tries. “For Cas, too. You deserve someone that understands you too and god, Dean, it’s so typical of you that he’s stuck in some cosmic realm we stand barely a chance of getting into, but we’re going to try, okay?”

Dean feels sick, he feels cold, he feels itchy, he feels utterly undone. He’s being unmade in this hollow room in this empty bunker before his baby brother and there’s nothing he can do about it. Because Sammy knows what Dean has been refusing to acknowledge and he’s just said it, just laid it out on the table in huge letters for anyone that needs to see it, and god Dean needs to see it.

“Alright,” he says quietly instead. “Let’s bring him home.”

***

It takes less than 24 hours for Sam to recruit Eileen, Jody, Claire and Donna to the cause. Alex comes along too “in case of any medical emergencies”, she reasons, but Dean knows it’s because she misses them. And suddenly, as though in a blink, Dean is stood in the library amongst them and they’re ready to go.

Sam has prepared the ingredients and has the spell written down, Eileen, Jody and Claire are ready to fight whatever they need to, Donna too. Alex is hanging back with Miracle, by the map table, just in case.

Dean can’t help but feel nervous. Because what if this doesn’t work? Has he really rallied all these people, who seemingly care for him and love him, to potentially fail?

Jody flashes him a small smile and runs her hand down his arm. It’s supposed to be reassuring, and to a degree it is. He grabs her hand when it reaches his and squeezes tight. “Thank you,” he mumbles.

“Hey,” Claire says quietly from her space beside him. The jacket is laying across one of the library tables, a small piece of the handprint cut out of it, and she can’t take her eyes off of it. “Is it really his blood?”

“Yeah,” Dean tries to smile, pulling her into a hug.

“Is this going to work?”

“I don’t know,” he answers honestly.

They’re silent for a moment. Dean can see a thousand more questions written all over Claire’s face, but he knows he has no answers. None that he’s ready to talk about, anyway. And she knows it too.

“Okay,” Claire nods, and finally looks to Dean. “What do you need us to do?”

***

The spell doesn’t work.

Or rather, it works, but it doesn’t work enough.

Sam’s incantation was correct, the scrap of the jacket added to the bowl opened the portal, and the black tendrils wrapping around the portal entrance sat in the middle of the library, taunting Dean. Torturing him with the images he hasn’t been able to get out of his head.

But Castiel didn’t walk through.

And Dean couldn’t go in.

Dean looks around now, from where the Empty knocked his ass to the floor after his third attempt at walking through, and he sees the pity in Sam’s eyes, the unshed tears in Donna’s, the defeat in Claire’s. Jody is crouching next to him, hand on his shoulder, and telling him how sorry she is. That they can try again. That they all just need a break and then they can figure it out.

But he can barely hear her.

White noise fills his ears, and blind rage fills his eyes.

He swipes at the bowl full of ingredients angrily, tipping the flaming contents across the floor and watches with a sick satisfaction as the portal closes and yet another lead dries up.

Dean is shaking as he shrugs Jody’s hand off and he’s furious as he walks away.

He thinks he can hear Claire calling after him, but it doesn’t matter.

None of them can do anything.

Miracle follows him to his room and slips through the door before it is slammed, before Dean punches the wall and bloodies his knuckles. Before he stares at himself in his tiny mirror and hates the angry, grieving, disaster that he sees looking back at him.

“Dammit, Cas,” he says, gritting his teeth, trying to pray. “Where the fuck are you? Why aren’t you here?”

***

Dean wakes with a start as soon as he starts to sleep. A glance at the clock tells him it’s 2am and he knows he heard something. He heard something fall.

“Stay,” he whispers to Miracle as he stands from the bed, gun and demon blade tucked into his waistband.

He makes it to the library without incident, thoughts of needing the archangel blade to hand, of Lucifer breaking free, of the portal to the Empty not being entirely closed and having Satan himself walking free in his home.

Sam is in the library, scribbling quickly onto a scrap of paper with at least six books open in front of him and a plethora of plants and ingredients scattered around.

And then he spots it.

The angel blade that fell to the floor.

“You’ll need that,” Sam says without looking at him, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the blade. “I don’t know how effective it is in the Empty but it’s better to go heavy-handed than not at all.”

“Sam, it didn’t work,” Dean says, slowly. “You don’t have to do this.”

“It didn’t work because Castiel is asleep. He can’t walk out because he’s probably asleep,” Sam explains, as though it’s really that simple but like a man driven mad by it. “It’s a spell designed for him to get out, not for you to go in. But I’ve figured it out. I can get you in.”

Dean nods, suddenly feeling wide awake. He doesn’t even question the legitimacy of it. “I’ll go get ready, then.” He gestures to his hotdog pyjamas with a smirk, but his heart is hammering in his chest and really, he’d go save Castiel wearing a dress if he had to, but he needs to calm down. He needs to focus. Because this really is last-chance-saloon. All his moping and self-deprecating and desperate need to _just do something_ comes down to this.

He gets to his room and sits, just for a moment on the edge of his bed, ruffling Miracle’s fur.

And then he takes a deep breath.

“Cas,” he prays, holding onto Miracle with a trembling hand. “I don’t think you can hear me where you are, but I hope you can, I really hope you can.”

He takes another deep breath.

“We found a way,” he continues. “Jack helped. But I’m going to bring you home. I wish I could have said something, or done something, to stop you and I wish I could have saved you when you needed me to. I’m so sorry, man. You’ve been stuck there for so long.”

Miracle encourages him, moving a paw to rest on Dean’s leg.

“I wish I had time to tell you what you needed, deserved to hear. I don’t know why I couldn’t say anything but god, Cas,” Dean struggles, and sighs. “I don’t want paradise if you don’t get to be in it too. You fought for this and believed in this so you should be here, with us.”

He quickly changes into the clothes he took off earlier and grabs his gun and the demon blade again.

“I’m bringing you home, Cas. I’m going to make this right.”

_Everything you have ever done, you’ve done for love._

He does a quick once-over, drops a kiss onto Miracle’s head and leaves to meet Sam.

They quietly pick up the remainder of the spell ingredients, including the jacket, and take them to room 7b, because somehow it feels right. They’re not rushing. Everything is eerily calm.

This is it, Dean tells himself. One last shot.

Sam conducts the spell with relative ease which doesn’t surprise him. The sign of the Empty opening before him, from the same wall it burst in on before, takes his breath away for a moment but he gathers himself after a few seconds.

Sam passes him the angel blade and he tucks it into his belt next to the demon knife. He keeps his gun in its holster and gears himself to move. The portal, covered in the same thick black mess that consumed Castiel, settles in its open state, ready to swallow him whole. Like last time, Castiel doesn’t emerge. He’s not going to walk out. But:

“If I calculated it right, you should end up where he is,” Sam explains. “We don’t know anything about this place. Cas never really spoke about it in detail but wherever he is in there, you should be.”

“Sammy,” Dean turns to him, one last time before walking into the unknown. “Thank you.”

“Hey, we all want him back,” Sam tries to joke, but Dean catches his eyes filling slowly and smiles. “Just be careful, okay?”

Dean laughs, tries to break the tension. He’d normally give Sam a big speech, some acknowledgement of how Sam needs to live his life so he’s safe from harm, so he doesn’t suffer the same fate should Dean not return. But he looks at him now, in this post-Chuck world, before this mission that doesn’t really have anything to do with Sam anyway, and he knows he doesn’t need to do it. Sam has Eileen, he has the bunker and a whole host of hunter friends. He’s uniquely skilled in so many different and exciting ways and he has a new determination to live, to enjoy the freedom he fought for. Sammy will be just fine.

But there’s just one more thing he needs to say, one more thing he can’t keep in.

Dean turns to his brother and lets out his last secret: “Cas died because he loved me.”

And Sam’s not surprised. He’s not shocked. He just smiles and nods.

The dots are connecting. The lines are being drawn. They all start with Castiel loving him and they all end with… something.

“No,” Sam says, deadly serious. “Cas _saved_ you because he loved you.”

And Dean says nothing. Because what can he say? Both statements are true. But only one has been clawing at his chest trying to rip his heart out, stopping him from living, preventing him from being at peace.

“And now, assuming you don’t piss off any more cosmic entities and get yourself killed, we’re going to save him.”

“Don’t you worry,” Dean jokes, because it’s about all he can do. He’s grateful for the opportunity when he feels like he’s choking. “I’ll be my usual charming, reckless self. We’ll be back before you know it.”

“Good luck,” Sam offers and pulls him into a quick hug.

“Okay,” Dean says, pulling away. “Let’s go get this son of a bitch.”

He steps forward, and with nothing more than a blink and a short gasp, he’s Nowhere.

***

“Cas!” he yells, just like last time. It echoes for miles and then it echoes right back to him. His voice is travelling to nothing.

“Dean,” he finally hears a voice behind him, his own, but slightly accented. “You shouldn’t be here.”

He whirls around and faces himself.

The Shadow.

It has his face but it’s a face he hasn’t worn in many years. He sees the Mark of Cain on the Shadow’s arm and can almost feel the blood on his face as he stares right at it. Castiel’s blood, probably.

“I don’t know much about you, but I knew you’d come for him.”

“Well then get out of my way,” Dean smirks. He wants to fight but he isn’t sure which weapon to choose – the angel blade stashed in his belt, the archangel blade he remembered at the last minute, the demon blade, or just his hands. The Shadow waves its hand and throws Dean to the floor with no effort at all.

“Everything I know of you I know because of him,” the Shadow sneers, leaning over Dean alarmingly close. “All of his regrets, his pain. It’s all you.”

But, annoyingly, Dean isn’t done yet. “You sound kinda jealous, pal.”

Dean is thrown further away. He objectively understands he’s on a floor, but he can’t see it. There is no difference to the floor, ceiling, walls, anything. It’s all just dark and cold and blank. It’s nothing.

“You think you can take him away from here?” the Shadow laughs. “You think he’ll walk away willingly, with you? He chose this, Dean. _He_ summoned _me_. He only remembers you like _this_.”

The Shadow gestures towards the younger, worn down and murderous version of Dean it is currently embodying. Dean pulls himself from the ground and shakes off the aching in his bones, the twinge in his knee from where he landed awkwardly. “Where is he?”

But the Shadow merely smirks at him. Just stares at him, dreaming up its next manipulation.

“He doesn’t care about you, Dean,” it says with a laugh. “He lied to you. He doesn’t love you.”

The Shadow pretends to vomit at the thought and delights in the expression on Dean’s face, the one he’s losing control over. Where Castiel’s last words gave him strength, the Shadow is expertly trained to tear it right down.

“His permission to be happy was to get away from you. He told you a wonderful story, but I see into his mind, into every part of his infinite brain, and what was it that he really wanted? To leave you.”

Dean can’t help himself. “You’re lying. Where. Is. He?”

“He. Doesn’t. Want. To. See. You.”

Dean nods, considers his move. But he doesn’t have one. He has never known anything about the Shadow or the Empty. He never pushed Castiel to talk about it and only picked up glimpses from what he would say and… it’s going to kill him.

He wonders if it’s going to happen fast or slow, if he can get Castiel out before it happens or if he will have to find his own way.

Or if this has just been another pointless endeavour of a man failing to grieve.

“Maybe not, but I want to see him,” Dean says, his confidence betraying the chaos beneath his skin. “Don’t make me fight you.”

The Shadow cackles, as he expected. “Fight me? You don’t even know what I am, boy.”

“No,” Dean agrees. And then he yells. “CASTIEL! SHOW YOURSELF!”

And finally, he understands.

The Shadow throws its hands over its ears immediately and tries to duck away from the noise.

Because every enemy has a weakness.

“No!” The Shadow yells.

But this time Dean just laughs. And yells some more. “CASTIEL! CAS! COME ON, MAN!”

Dean still can’t see a lot, but he can see some of the black swirling just beyond the Shadow. Strange forms beginning to take shape, made entirely of the substance of the Empty – made of nothing and everything all at once.

He takes a second to wonder if Castiel will look like that. What if he appears to him like this? Would it be okay? Would he have to find a new vessel? Would that change… anything?

And honestly? No.

“Stop!” The Shadow tries for a booming voice this time, and just for good measure makes sure to swipe Dean off his feet again. The Shadow throws him higher this time, so he lands harder. The aches turn into breaks, but he’s somehow still got air in his lungs. And so, from the ground, he continues:

“CASTIEL!”

Over and over until he wonders if he even has vocal cords left. The Shadow keeps kicking him, hitting him, pushing him, but he’s waking the Empty up. He’s disrupting everything. The humanoid shapes are getting closer, multiplying by the minute. Dean’s body is broken but he only came here to do one thing, so he’s going to do it.

“Who do you think you are?” the Shadow rages, standing above where Dean is slumped to the ground. “Do you think it’s easy, keeping every angel and demon asleep? Do you think it was easy to restore order after your INSUFFERABLE NEPHILIM RUINED IT? And now you stroll on into MY DOMAIN and decide you know better?”

Dean just continues yelling, shuts the Shadow’s voice from his mind. He’s not listening, he won’t listen. He can see the shapes moving and squirming behind the Shadow, behind this tortured, hopeless version of himself and he knows he’s winning. He yells some more, laughs some more, and groans a little when his body wants him to stop, when his lungs feel like they might give in.

“SHUT UP!” The Shadow eventually yells and with a click of its fingers, Castiel appears before him the very image of the man haunting every minute of Dean’s existence. He’s lying on the ground and he’s awake and he’s squinting, and he’s never looked more confused.

“Dean?” Castiel questions but behind his eyes, Dean only sees wariness. Concern. Fear.

Dean looks around and he can’t see the Shadow anymore. The shapes are moving closer and closer, but the Shadow has bailed.

“Cas, it’s me,” he says by way of explanation, but it doesn’t do any good because Castiel isn’t moving and Dean’s pretty sure one of his legs is broken. “Come on, man, before it comes back.”

“I don’t even know what memory this is,” Castiel says quietly, sitting up from the floor.

“What are you talking about?” Dean asks, irritated. “We need to go, Cas! I need your help, come on!”

But Castiel only screws his eyes shut and blocks out the sound of Dean’s voice. And Dean has no idea what to do. He can see the light in the distance, the tear in the fabric of this Nothing, and he knows they need to go but…

“Hey, man,” Dean shuffles across the floor to reach out and grab at Castiel’s sleeve. “Look at me.”

He forces his hands either side of Castiel’s head to move his arms away, to get him to open his eyes. He holds his grip on the back of Castiel’s head and refuses to look away.

“Cas, please,” Dean pleads. “You have to come with me. I need you to come home.”

Castiel’s eyes, bluer than Dean could have ever remembered on his own, fixate on Dean’s face. It feels like an age before he shows even a hint of relaxing, of understanding what is happening.

“Dean?” Castiel asks once more, but this time he barely brushes his fingertips along Dean’s cheek, trying to trust that he’s real. “What is this?”

Dean can only bring himself to laugh a little. If he doesn’t laugh, he’s sure he won’t hold himself together.

“This is me taking you home,” he explains simply, but for what feels like the tenth time. “It’s so good to see you, man. So fucking good. But we don’t have time, we have to leave.”

Castiel finally nods in agreement, but not before pulling Dean into a hug that almost knocks the air from his lungs and drops his heart into his stomach. Dean wraps his arms around Castiel as tightly as he’s being held and it’s awkward because they’re both still on the floor, but Dean doesn’t know how he’s ever going to let go.

With every fibre of that stupid trenchcoat under his fingertips, his chin, his arms, wherever he can physically touch, he feels the universe stitching itself back together in every one of his cells and he knows this is right. This is good. This isn’t a win with cosmic consequences like defeating Chuck or Amara, or even Death itself, but it’s the biggest win Dean is after. It’s the only win he wants. And he never wants to chase it ever again.

“Come on, man,” he pulls back, trying to hide the magnitude of what this experience is and all the ways it is changing him, and grabs Castiel by the shoulder. “Let’s go home.”

Castiel nods, still bewildered, but ready to do what is needed. “Okay, Dean.”

Dean tests the waters and finds that his leg is now okay to walk on. So, he does the only thing he can think to do – he grabs Castiel’s hand and they run to the light, to the glimpses of the bunker up ahead. He’s aware of the other demons and angels, not yet fully formed, trying to chase after them, trying to force their way to freedom.

But as they make it through, Dean watches the black tendrils synonymous with the Empty and the Shadow knit themselves back together and vanish into thin air, as if it had never been there at all.

He’s sprawled somewhere in the middle of the devil’s trap, and Castiel is propped against one of the walls.

And it’s so absurd. It’s insane.

But he’s won.

He’s succeeded.

He wants to cry, feels the urge building from his chest and prickling at his eyes, but he swallows it down, and with one look at Castiel’s utterly bewildered face, he laughs and laughs and laughs. Sam in the corner, by the shelves, relieved and astonished, unharmed. Dean turns to Castiel, grinning, elated.

“Welcome home, man.”

***

But then suddenly it’s awkward.

Jody and the girls leave the next morning, Claire clinging to Castiel longer than she’d ever admit as they hug and say goodbye, as Dean provides an endless supply of _thanks_ and _thank_ _you_ ’s and _I couldn’t have done it without you_ ’s.

But whatever grace Castiel had managed to pull together to heal Dean in the Empty has depleted, so now he sleeps. He settles back into his bland, vacant room, so devoid of personal effects, and promptly collapses into the bed. He doesn’t wake for at least twelve hours, at first.

Which does nothing to stop Sam always wanting to talk about it.

“Do you think his grace will come back?” he asks over the burgers Dean has made up for lunch a couple of days later. Sam hasn’t spoken about a hunt since Castiel returned and they’ve fallen into a temporary routine – three meals a day, coffee pot always on, even a cleaning schedule. Having Castiel back has shifted them into a temporary new way of living.

And Dean knows why.

And he’d be lying if he didn’t say it was starting to feel… comfortable.

He knows he doesn’t want anything to risk this moment he’s in right now – his loved ones are the safest they’ve ever been. He doesn’t want something as mundane as a vamp nest or errant spirit to interrupt that. He won’t put Castiel back on the front line and he refuses to leave him.

Even if he won’t just talk to him.

“I hope so,” Dean says around a mouthful. “I keep wondering if I did something wrong, but I think it was the Shadow.”

“What do you mean?”

“It wasn’t going to let him leave,” Dean explains, trying not to relive the memory of fighting alone, no guarantee of success. “I don’t know what happened, but it just gave up. His grace was probably the price for freedom, to shut me up.”

Sam nods, finishes some more of his food and just when Dean is sure he’s going to let it go.

“Do you think he would have chosen that? If he knew?”

Dean sighs. “I don’t know, man. You know him as well as I do.”

“You know that’s not true,” Sam laughs it off, but the surprise of the statement and the ease at which Sam said it hits Dean right in the chest. Sam’s right. Of course, he’s right. But it doesn’t make it any easier to hear. “Have you spoken to him yet, about how he died?”

“No,” Dean rubs his hands over his face before continuing to eat. “He’s always sleeping, you know?”

“I’m sure he’d find the time if you needed it,” Sam says, with that look on his face. The one Dean hates. The one that says he knows exactly what Dean is doing, and it’s not going to fly with him. “It’s been a few days now.”

“I know,” Dean groans and drops the rest of his burger to the plate, appetite gone.

***

It takes another few hours for Dean to pick up the damn mixtape and find his way to Castiel’s door, mid-afternoon. He breathes, breathes again, rolls his eyes, and finally forces his hand to knock. “Cas? You awake?”

Dean is about to turn the doorknob when it suddenly flies open, and there he is. Castiel is wearing one of Dean’s old t-shirts and some lounge pants that he probably found in the drawers. His hair is a mess and it’s obvious that he hasn’t found his way around a razor yet. But he looks rested. And he looks… good. Really good.

“Hello, Dean,” he smiles.

“Cas, hey, can I come in?” Dean eventually stutters.

And he hates himself. When did he become this person? Why can’t he just have a normal conversation?

Because normal went out of the window when it started with “ _I love you_ ” and ended with-

Castiel rolls his eyes, like the answer is obvious, and steps aside. Dean grips the tape so hard he thinks it might break.

“So,” Dean coughs a little. “How you doing, man?”

“Fine,” Castiel answers immediately.

“You sure? You’ve been a little out of it since you got back.”

“It’s different from before,” Castiel smiles and sits on the edge of his bed. “Last time, the Shadow returned me as I was before I died because it wanted rid of me. It was a negotiation.”

Dean only nods and seats himself on the sofa across from the bed.

“But this time we had a deal. Whatever it thought it was getting from me in that deal, it wasn’t going to lose easily.” Castiel is sombre, but Dean has yet to see any signs of regret. Any hints that this probably wasn’t what he really wanted. “The Empty thrives on angelic and demonic energy. My body, vessel, personality, none of that was important. That was just personal.”

Dean wonders if this couldn’t have been resolved in the moment had they more time. Perhaps the deal could have been broken, an agreement met before it had to result in anyone dying. Because Castiel’s personality, friendship, and his body, is all that Dean ever wanted. They were the most important things in the world when Dean was screaming his lungs out and fighting back against every push, pull, ache and break.

“Why didn’t you tell me, us, about your deal?”

“I didn’t want to worry you,” Castiel answers, his response almost rehearsed. “We were dealing with Michael and we didn’t know what would happen to you. I didn’t want to add to that.”

“Fine,” Dean says, but he’s hitting a tone he instantly regrets. He didn’t come here to get angry. He didn’t come to start a fight. “But we dealt with that. Why didn’t you say anything after that?”

“After we lost Jack and Mary, and had to deal with Chuck? After entire universes started collapsing and you wouldn’t even look at me, let alone speak to me?” Castiel sighs. “I vowed a long time ago not to add any unnecessary burden to your life, Dean. I always intended to honour that.”

Dean just nods. “And that’s what you see this as? An ‘unnecessary burden’?”

He’s not sure they’re talking about the deal anymore.

“Dean,” Castiel starts. But that’s as far as he gets because Dean holds his hand up and shakes his head.

“It’s okay, man,” Dean stands and makes for the door, but not before dropping the mixtape onto the side, next to the stereo. “I borrowed that while you were gone, thought you might want it back.”

And then he leaves.

***

Over the next couple of days, Dean pretends like the conversation never happened. He cooks food, watches TV, shares his favourite horror movies with Castiel, and reluctantly takes him shopping for more clothes when he asks. The trenchcoat stays though. No matter how many different tops, pants or ties he may now have, the trenchcoat remains. Dean doesn’t know whether to be glad about it or not, but he remains painfully aware that the flash of tan fabric in his peripheral is instantly soothing.

“I’ve got a case,” Sam declares, Dean only just making it into the library. Castiel is sat at another table typing on his new laptop. Dean’s just glad to see it being used after having to fake an entirely new credit card to buy it.

“You heading out with Eileen then?” Dean doesn’t miss the glance from Castiel, the slightly arched eyebrow then familiar frown.

“No,” Sam answers slowly. “She’s busy. I thought maybe both of you could come along?”

“No,” Dean answers without discussion. “Put someone else on it.”

“What’s the case?” Castiel asks and Dean feels it like ice forming in his centre.

“No,” he repeats.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to go, I can go with Sam,” Castiel offers, failing to understand exactly what Dean’s issue is. If only he knew how dry his mouth had become, how dead he felt inside at the very idea of it. “I want to get back to normal.”

“But you’re not normal, are you?” Dean’s tone wasn’t what he intended, and he regrets his words as soon as he says them, but the point stands. He’s not going to take it back now, no matter how much the hurt look Castiel throws his way makes him squirm. “You’re all out of angel juice! What are you going to do if this thing comes for you?”

He sees Sam shaking his head, resting his face in the palms of his hands, elbows on the table, but he won’t back down.

“Dean,” Castiel says, and he means business. He’s not taking this crap and god, Dean knows he deserves it. But if this is the price he’s going to pay to try and keep him safe? He’ll take it. “Are you suggesting that without my grace I can’t offer anything of use?”

“No-” Dean starts, running his hand over his face in exasperation.

“Good. What’s the case, Sam?” Castiel concludes. And that’s the end of that.

“Fine,” Dean huffs and opens his laptop.

It takes another half an hour of vaguely listening to the details of what appears to be a vengeful spirit before Dean stands, pulls his keys out of his pocket and declares they’re taking the Impala.

***

It’s a disaster.

They burn through two graves before they find the right one, but not before the spirit tries to possess Sam and strangles Castiel. Dean rushes into the room to find Castiel held up against the wall by a ghost he can barely see, slowly losing consciousness. Sam is on the floor, scrabbling around for a shotgun that Dean can’t find. They dropped the crowbars in the kitchen the first time the ghost tried to attack.

Dean feels the moment like a hand gripped tight on his heart, squeezing him to death. He tries to breathe but all he can see is Castiel’s eyes closing, slowly. All he can do is watch as Castiel extends an arm, just slightly, in his direction. His hand is stretched, like he wants someone to hold it. But Dean can’t do that. He can barely move. He just got him back and now…

“Dean!” Sam calls from where he is still on the floor and for the first time, Dean notices that he’s hurt. But he’s shoving a tall wrought iron candlestick across the floor for Dean to catch, and as soon as it is in his hand, he swipes at the ghost who vanishes into particles around them.

“Cas!” Dean exclaims, rushing to get to him where he slumps down the wall. “You okay?”

He grabs him by the shoulder and shakes him a little, and it earns him a groggy half-smile and a hand gripping at his own. “I’ll live,” Castiel jokes and accepts Dean’s help to stand. Dean turns to check Sam is okay and finds him standing but limping.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Later. Did you find the grave?” Sam asks, a little out of breath.

He did. And the case is solved, and everyone is saved, but there is a redness around Castiel’s neck that wasn’t there before, an irritation that he keeps rubbing, deeper breaths than usual and it’s impossible for Dean to think about anything else. He drives back to the bunker like a maniac, hoping no one notices the absurd number of times he checks the rear-view mirror. Just in case.

“I’m going to bed,” Sam announces with a yawn when they return, while Dean leads Castiel to the library and pours them both a drink.

“That was pretty rough today,” Dean observes after a moment of silence. The whiskey runs down his throat, gently warming the cold that had not left since he saw Castiel dying against that wall.

“Yes, it was,” Castiel agrees with a small smile. “But you saved me, again.”

Dean squirms a little in his chair and hides the way his body forces a smile back. He’s sitting opposite Castiel at one of the tables and accidentally knocks his foot whilst trying to wriggle away from the implications in that one simple sentence.

“You’re family, Cas,” he manages to get out, but for the first time it sounds hollow, devoid of meaning. Because Castiel is his family but he’s not ‘family’ in the broader sense Dean had always been taught to use it. “I’m not going to fight some cosmic entity to bring you home just to let some pissed off ghost kill you.”

He knows Castiel likes to be told he’s part of Dean’s family, he’s not blind. But for the first time, it doesn’t ring as true as it used to. Dean recounts the times he has told people he cares for them, loves them, by way of telling them they’re family and it just doesn’t work for Castiel anymore. When he says it now to Castiel, it feels too small. He feels nervous all of a sudden, uncomfortable even.

And if he’s being honest, and for the first time he thinks he might be, he knows exactly why.

And he thinks that maybe Castiel understands what a revelation this _isn’t_ , as he puts his glass down on the table and makes to stand. “Good-” he starts, trying to say goodnight, goodbye…

Dean throws his hand out and places it on top of Castiel’s, still lying on the tabletop. The contact sends a thrill down his spine and nausea through his stomach. It’s an involuntary act, but the only one that makes sense so far.

“Wait,” he says, quietly. “Please?”

And Castiel does, with wide and confused eyes.

As he takes his seat, Dean holds onto his hand. His arm is stretched across the table, but it makes no sense to stop.

“I don’t understand the way you see me,” Dean starts, swallowing down any instinct to abort the mission and retreat. “But I need you to know… I heard what you said so I know why you do.”

“I never wanted to make you feel uncomfortable, Dean,” Castiel rushes to clarify, placing his other hand on top of theirs, still together. “And we don’t have to talk about it. I never intended to ever have to say anything, but it was the only way to keep you safe in that moment.”

“You never would have told me that-?”

“As soon as I understood my end of the deal, I just assumed I would never find a reason to be happy. Our lives have rarely offered moments that would allow it.”

“Well,” Dean uses his spare hand to drink a large mouthful of whiskey. Castiel is jovial, in a sense, but the thought unnerves him. For as much as he knows this is light-hearted, that Castiel has found his sense-of-humour over the years, the fact remains that if he had never spoken, he would never have been happy. It sits heavy in Dean’s heart, confusing the situation. He just doesn’t know what to do with that. Either way, the existence of this deal required Castiel to make a huge sacrifice, and both options were because of Dean. So, he can only offer him a small morsel, something that is absolutely diminished in the face of Castiel’s determination to do right by Dean but… he just can’t give any more without cracking himself open and bleeding onto the table before him. “It doesn’t make me uncomfortable.”

He dares to run his thumb over Castiel’s knuckles, just once, but he can’t make eye contact when Castiel grips his hand a little in return.

“I froze today, seeing the way that spirit had you,” Dean admits, which is somehow easier than saying what he knows Castiel needs to hear, deserves to hear. He pulls his hand back slowly. “I couldn’t see anything but you dying, and I can’t do that again, Cas.”

“I’ve been in worse situations before,” Castiel tries to reason, and he’s right. Dean knows he is. He has seen him deal with worse and who knows what he was getting up to when he was away from the bunker.

“You’re not listening,” he says. He’s trying not to sound confrontational, but it happens anyway, because this is Dean. And this is what he does. The edge of anger hits his words, and he cringes slightly as he hears it.

“Dean-”

“No, you don’t get it,” Dean laughs, but he’s not amused. “We’ve lost you too many times, Cas. Last time was… it was bad. I can’t go through that again.”

Castiel says nothing.

“You’ve got to be more careful,” Dean pleads. “Maybe you should sit the next few out.”

“And sit back like some damsel in distress, waiting for the heroes to come home?”

“If it’s the difference between you being alive or dead, yes!” Dean raises his voice because he’s tried, but he just can’t keep it at bay.

“No,” Castiel responds, indignant, refusing to rise to Dean’s bait.

Dean leaves his seat and walks a few steps away, head in his hands, gazing at the ceiling.

“I can’t stay here playing housewife just because you don’t trust me to do the job properly,” Castiel continues. “I’m not going to get myself killed whenever I so much as leave the bunker, Dean. Need I remind you that you weren’t there the last time I lost my grace? You don’t know how capable I can be. One particularly tricky spirit isn’t the measure of what I can do, grace or no grace.”

And that… that’s fair. And Dean can’t argue. And he can’t swallow down the sudden hit of guilt, because he tries not to think about that time, tries not to dwell on being taken in by Gadreel, leaving Castiel out in the cold. Because he doesn’t know how Castiel can even stand to look at him, let alone look him in the eye and tell him he’s the most loving, caring, selfless person he’s ever known.

Although Castiel still isn’t really listening to him, but Dean’s not sure he’s even articulating what needs to be heard.

“I trust you,” Dean eventually says in a smaller voice. “I do trust you, Cas. You’ve had my back more times than almost anyone I’ve ever known, of course I trust you. I don’t trust myself.”

“I don’t understand.”

Dean takes a breath. And another. And another one. And then a sip of his whiskey. “You have no idea what it’s like when you’re gone. Last time, I was the one that carried you inside, that prepared you for the funeral. I was the one that had to light the pyre and then go on, pretend to care about saving the world one case at a time. This time you left nothing behind, and I had no leads to save you.” Dean pauses for a minute, trying to be careful. Trying not to blurt out something he hasn’t fully processed in his own mind yet. “You can do what you want, hunt with Sam, whatever, I’m not trying to stop you. But I need you to hear me when I tell you that I don’t think I have it in me to go through it again.”

Castiel nods and stands to join Dean where he is trying not to pace. Trying not to sweep a lamp from the table to the floor. “Alright, Dean. I’m sorry, I didn’t know you felt that way. I’ll be more careful.”

Castiel is too close. Dean was happy with the table between them, with pacing while Castiel sat. But now Castiel is right in front of him, he can almost feel his breath on his own face and it’s all just too much.

His eyes zero in on Castiel’s mouth, because fuck… he just can’t help it. And Castiel nearly died today. _Again._ And shit, he’s so damn close.

“Cas,” Dean starts, barely above a whisper, and he knows he has his full attention. Castiel is laser focused on him, head tilted ever so slightly with a barely-there frown nestling into his brow and Dean can see it all. Because he’s right there. “Cas, I-”

"Hey," Sam calls over as he strolls in, yawning, and Castiel courteously takes a step back. "Jody just called. She's got a werewolf pack that's bigger than she thought and needs a hand. You guys want in? We can leave in the morning."

And not for the first time: _fuck_.

***

It’s a week later and Dean is in a damp, abandoned warehouse in Minnesota staring at Castiel, his eyes pitch black, and a smirk contorting his face unnaturally. He has Donna by her neck next to him and he’s taunting Dean.

He’s beginning to feel the ache in his bones, just how tired he is. Of jumping from a werewolf pack with Jody, to Donna being held hostage by an errant demon, to Castiel _once again_ being held before him half like a promise and half like a threat.

“I’ve never had an angel before,” Castiel’s voice says but it’s anything but him. “The shred of grace he has left stings a little, but I can manage.”

But Dean says nothing, even though the ‘shred of grace’ is news to him. He knows better than to play into a demon’s trap. He can practically hear the cogs whirring in Sam’s mind as he wrestles between quick attempt at an exorcism or somehow creating a devil’s trap without it noticing. It seems impossible.

“You,” the demon points at Dean with Castiel’s free hand. “Oh, it’s you.”

Still, Dean says nothing.

“Dean, right? It’s all up here,” the demon gestures to Castiel’s head and jabs at it. “Dean, Dean, Dean, I love Dean, Dean, Dean, so beautiful, beautiful Dean, Deeeeeeeeeeeean.”

The demon takes a step forward, dragging Donna along. Dean knows he should be throwing holy water, he should be starting to chant the exorcism, he should be doing anything. But he’s stuck in place, once again.

And he can’t do this _again_.

And why is Castiel the collateral damage _once again_?

There is a body slumped on the floor across the warehouse that the demon abandoned when he saw Castiel, sensed his humanity. But it doesn’t matter. _Saving people, hunting things_ , but the only thing Dean can see is his best friend paraded around by a creature so abhorrent to Castiel. There isn’t any justice.

“I’m going to rip you limb from limb and I’m going to make him remember. I’m going to make sure the only face you see as you die is his. And then I’m going to laugh so fucking hard.”

Donna is fumbling around her belt and as quick as a flash, Dean sees a small vial of holy water in her hands.

Demons are so stupid, Dean thinks with relief. So, so fucking stupid.

“Come on then,” Dean bluffs. “Tear me to shreds, it wouldn’t be the first time.”

Just as the demon adopts Castiel’s odd head tilt, Donna empties the vial onto the demon’s hand around her neck and breaks free as the skin burns. She runs to Sam, but the demon doesn’t care. It advances on Dean as Sam throws more holy water to deter it. Dean keeps moving backwards, makes sure the demon follows him, and eventually they land exactly where they need to be... if the universe was playing fair, anyway.

Donna stands back from the devil’s trap she’s tried to throw together behind some broken down boxes but it’s not quite finished and now it’s just Dean and Castiel. The demon reaches forward to grab Dean, one hand around his neck and the other on Dean’s shoulder. The demon squeezes tight and Dean starts to feel lightheaded. He can hear Sam in the background, starting the exorcism with Donna, but all he can see is Castiel. He grips at Castiel’s arms just to hold onto anything.

“Cas,” Dean forces out, his voice scratchier than it was moments before. “Hang in there, man.”

“He can’t hear you,” the demon hisses. “He’ll never hear you again.”

The demon’s black eyes flicker offering glimpses of Castiel’s blue underneath. Dean doesn’t know if he’s hallucinating through lack of oxygen or if it’s some kind of miracle, but he can see a faint glow in them. He knows that glow. He’s missed that glow, been longing to see it again.

“I don’t think so, pal,” Dean smirks, voice straining against the hand pressing on his throat. 

Save for Crowley, Dean hasn’t ever seen a demon try to possess an angel. Or rather, he’s never seen a demon burn from the inside out by the sheer will of the grace held inside an angel bursting to the surface. The demon doesn’t burst out into smoke or try to run away. It can’t. Dean feels the grip around his neck loosen and the hand on his shoulder drop completely.

“Shut your eyes,” he hears faintly and does, but even through his eyelids he can see a blinding amount of light erupt from Castiel. Just as Dean opens his eyes, Castiel’s hand slips from his neck completely and the glow around him fades as he falls to the floor, unconscious.

Dean joins him in a heartbeat, scrambling to him while trying to catch his breath, reaching to grasp at his face, his shoulder, his arm… anywhere. Anywhere he can find a sign of life.

“Cas!” he shakes Castiel. “Cas, come on.”

Dean knows how this can go.

He knows that demons, even when exorcised, often leave their vessels for dead.

He knows it’s not often that their vessels wake up.

He knows all this.

But he remains on the floor, pulling Castiel towards him, running a hand over his face, and hoping beyond anything that tiny shred of grace has saved him.

“Cas,” Dean says. “Come on, wake up!”

Sam is kneeling next to them, trying to reach to check a pulse but Dean doesn’t even want to think about it. He knows Donna is stood to the side with her hands over her mouth, but still, he doesn’t want to know.

“Fuck!” Dean shouts, shaking Castiel more.

Another minute passes, that feels like an hour, before Castiel inhales sharply and clings to Dean’s jacket lapels from his awkward position lying across Dean’s lap, on a cold warehouse floor in Minnesota.

“Sorry about that,” Castiel says, when he finally realises the scene before him.

Dean lets out the breath he didn’t know he was holding and presses his forehead to Castiel’s, pressing hard enough to leave a mark. “Never again,” he says quietly. “You’re never doing this to me again.”

“Okay,” Castiel agrees. “But I think we need to speak to Rowena about her abominations running loose.”

And all Dean can do is laugh.

“Slow down, cowboy,” he sighs, falling away from Castiel and heaving heavy breaths on the floor. “We’ll put that on the to-do list for next week. I need a beer.”

Castiel smiles and hauls them both to their feet. He does it with ease, barely straining, despite sustaining injuries.

“How?” Dean asks.

“My grace,” Castiel answers. “It’s restoring.”

“And how long have you known about that?”

“About two minutes,” Castiel says, incredibly seriously.

Dean can only look at him. Suddenly there’s nothing to worry about. The news of Castiel’s grace restoring assuages his guilt and as it leaves him, Dean can’t take his eyes off of him. Castiel has bruises that he hasn’t quite healed yet and he looks an absolute mess, but Dean can see the spark in his eyes, can see the tiniest speck of angel that has come back to life and he can’t. stop. staring. He wonders, briefly, if this continues for even another minute, just how long he can keep it up without kissing Castiel. But:

“Oh boy,” Donna laughs, mostly with relief. Dean can see the strain in her eyes, the fear. “That was a close one! Good to have you back, Castiel.”

The spell is broken. “A little too close if you ask me,” Dean grumbles, stepping out of the vacuum he’s found himself in. “Know any good bars around here?”

“Sure do!” Donna has a spring in her step and an unwavering smile, and after a quick clean-up and a story for the demon’s previous vessel to take home, they dutifully follow her.

***

Dean finds Castiel in the Dean Cave later that night, sat in one of the recliners with Miracle draped across his lap from arm to arm of the chair. Dean swallows down the ridiculous pang of jealousy when he sees them. Jealous of who, he’s not sure.

“What are you watching?” Dean asks, throwing himself down into the other recliner and offering Castiel one of the beers in his hands. Castiel takes it awkwardly, trying not to disturb Miracle who Dean can now see is fast asleep.

“A documentary,” Castiel explains after taking a sip of the beer. He screws his face up a little as he swallows. “Well, that doesn’t taste the same.”

He puts the beer down on the side table and looks at it almost longingly.

“I guess angel mojo ain’t all it’s cracked up to be after all,” Dean tries to joke but it falls flat. Castiel just looks at him.

“Well at least you can stop coddling me whenever I so much as think about going on a hunt,” Castiel rolls his eyes, purposefully picks the beer back and takes a mouthful.

“Fine,” Dean huffs, giving the television his full attention. “Sorry for caring, I guess.”

Dean finally notices the ‘documentary’ is some sort of dog whisperer show and takes in Castiel’s hand in Miracle’s fur, gently fussing. And Castiel notices him.

“I don’t think dogs take much notice of television, but I thought hearing some familiar sounds might make him miss his brothers and sisters a little less,” Castiel explains and is rewarded with a pleasant grumble from Miracle as he continues to fuss a little.

“You think he’s lonely?” Dean can’t help but indulge this particular thread.

“No, but I’m sure he’s not immune to feeling like the odd one out.”

“Cas-”

“What made you get him?”

“Wasn’t really a choice. He was the last dog on Earth, found him after Chuck zapped everyone to nowhere, after-” Dean tries to explain but he still can’t say it. “When everyone came back, he sort of stayed with me.”

“Well, I think he’s great,” Castiel says in a voice Dean has never heard before, as he leans down and speaks directly into Miracle’s fur. Castiel is rewarded with Miracle nuzzling him right back for a moment and Dean… “Looking after a dog will seem simple after an archangel’s Nephilim.”

Dean is looking at this angel and his dog and they’ve both got his heart in a grip so tight it’s taken his breath away. He thinks of Jack, of his wish for Dean to feel at peace and live his life without pain, without chasing the impossible constantly. Without assuming his life began with a gun in his hand and will end with a blade through his chest. And fuck, this is it. He’s looking at this angel, and his dog, sitting in a recliner in Dean’s perfectly curated room watching shitty dog programmes and drinking crap beer. He allows himself just a moment to indulge, to think ahead, and he can feel that blade being removed from his chest. He can see his ending rewriting itself and… he kind of wants it. Really, really bad.

“How long have you known?” he says eventually, quietly, completely off-topic.

“That looking after a dog will be easy?” Castiel says slowly, trying to understand.

“That you… you know. What you told me, before-”

Dean is begging Castiel to get it. To know that he can’t just say it. That the mere thought of it lights him up on the inside and strangles him at the same time.

And by the ‘oh’ Castiel silently says, the way he pulls his eyes from Dean, it seems he does. But the silence lasts a little too long and god, Dean feels like shit.

“Sorry,” Dean rubs his face with the palm of his hand, furiously attempting to wipe his bad decisions away. “You don’t-”

But apparently, Castiel does.

“I’m not sure I can remember a time when I didn’t know.”

And he just drops it into the air, just says it and lets it hang there. And it’s Dean’s job to catch it, cradle it and send it back with something just as profound, as… romantic. But he’s fumbling because his mouth has gone dry and there’s a slight tremor in his hands and he’s pretty sure his beer is flat and man, has this chair always been so uncomfortable?

So, he just nods.

He stares right at Castiel… and he nods.

And finally: “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

Castiel just smiles. “Dean, you are aware that I made a deal with the Empty.”

“Before then.”

“I didn’t want anything to change.”

But the thing is: Dean does.

Within seconds he thinks of his father and crushes it, thinks about Lee and being sent away and a childhood of fear, of constantly fighting, of the apple-pie life that imploded in his face, and then this – Castiel and that stupid dog. Castiel who always comes back, who never leaves him for long. Castiel who sees him as clear as a bright sunny day and loves him anyway.

Castiel who broke free from God and Heaven, and who Dean followed into Nothing on a wing and a prayer just to bring him home.

He takes a breath, chugs some more of that flat, shitty beer, and stands to pace because it helps, because it gives his legs something to do while his hands don’t want to cooperate.

And Castiel is staring at him and he’s waiting.

"I don't know how to talk about this... this part of me," Dean says. It's tearing him apart. "I don't want to say the wrong thing, but I want to say it to you, whatever it is... fuck, I'm not making any sense."

Castiel keeps looking at him, intensely curious but consumed with confusion.

"How do you know that you can't have what you want?"

Oh. And there it is. Castiel's eyes light up a little with more understanding.

"I'm very familiar with unrequited love, Dean," he smiles but he’s not amused. "Humans have been telling tales, singing songs, and making movies about it for centuries. I know I'm not your type."

He puts the 'your type' in air-quotes with a slight smile and Dean thinks he might lose his mind. Because how does he know? How can he be so sure? The part of him that has been holding this back, for as long as he can remember, knows it would be so much easier if Castiel could just speak plainly and out loud and put it into the world before Dean gets a chance to, before he can muster up the words.

Dean Winchester, who has fought vampires and demons and God himself, can't find enough courage to tell the angel before him that he loves him, and he wants him to stay.

And it's that thought alone that seems to do it.

Where his insides are held up in padlocks and chains, suffocating him, stifling him, the thought that Castiel could leave again, choose to live a different life one day, believing, truly and earnestly, with no expectations, that his feelings are unrequited, is the key. He feels the chains slip to the floor and for the first time since he got Castiel back, Dean breathes, properly breathes.

"You're wrong," he finally forces himself to say. "You have no idea."

Castiel stays silent, but Dean can tell he's no longer at peace with what he thought he knew. That once, Dean would have had to have explained the intricacies and complications of romantic love and relationships, but he can see now just how human Castiel has become. He can see how much he's allowed himself to feel, how much he has let in. Dean lets himself acknowledge for the first time that Castiel will understand him, will hear him. And that's terrifying but exhilarating.

_You changed me, Dean._

Only now it doesn't hurt to acknowledge. Before, Dean heard Castiel. he heard him and then he watched him die, the forgone conclusion being that Dean destroyed him. But he sees now just how much he misunderstood.

"You can have it, Cas," Dean says, still unable to offer him exactly what he means. "What you want, that is. If you still want it."

He feels like his mouth is full of riddles, that he's cursed to never speak in plain English. That telling Castiel ‘I love you' might kill _him_ at this point, but he hopes he's been clear enough.

"Dean-" Castiel starts.

"If you don't want it anymore," Dean takes a deep breath. "Then same deal: no expectations, nothing has to change. You’re still family, to me. To Sam."

Castiel's eyes widen ever so slightly, and his mouth parts a little with surprise, but not for long before an impish amusement finally takes over his face.

"So, what you're saying is... I am your type?" again, with the air-quotes, but this time they make Dean laugh. He's happy to see Castiel beaming, like he hasn't seen in a long time, at Dean's amusement.

"Yeah," Dean shakes his head with a smile and finally the embarrassment hits. He hides his face in his hands until he feels Castiel's hands over his, gripping them and pulling them down just enough so he can see Dean's face. He's a lot closer than he was a minute ago. Dean didn’t notice Miracle being dumped on Dean’s chair, or Castiel making his way towards him. Dean can see the blue of his eyes so clearly and in Castiel's happiness, they're vibrant.

"You are still the one thing I want," Castiel confirms. "I think you always will be."

Dean nods, trying to look away, but he can't. He feels light in a way he hasn't felt since he was a child, like this was the last concern he had. The last thing he had to be scared of. And Castiel just swooped in and eradicated it. He lets out a long exhale and allows himself a small, slightly wonky, smile. "Good. That's real good, Cas."

***

And nothing _really_ changes.

Dean acknowledges in his mind how this looks, how it makes him feel. That nothing much had to change to step into this new, romantic territory tells him that he’s been with Castiel for years. That Sam hasn’t commented or noted any difference in them tells him it’s definitely been obvious for years.

And some things do change.

Dean’s brain is working like a switch in his brain has gone off and with permission to let his gaze wander, linger, and thoughts invade, he’s noticing _Castiel_ more.

Dean cooks breakfast in the mornings, and Castiel runs his hand over Dean’s back as he walks past. Dean says goodnight to Castiel in the evenings, and Castiel holds his hand just a little as they part. Castiel’s hand rests atop Dean’s shoulder when he stands in the library discussing possible cases in the library, his foot grazes his under the table where Sam isn’t looking, hugging him close, hands in Dean’s hair and on the small of his back when he returns home safely. He’s always touching, touching, touching and it seems as though that’s enough.

But it’s not enough.

And Dean doesn’t know why he didn’t just kiss him that night.

He doesn’t know why he still hasn’t.

There’s an internal thread of thought that Dean is trying to push down, that desperately wants to answer the question. It starts with John Winchester and ends somewhere in the general attitude of the world, of the image Dean has worked hard to cultivate, but he doesn’t want to listen anymore.

And yet, nothing changes.

Until they find a vamp nest in Maine.

The nest is bigger than they thought, and they’re easily outmanned. Sam is trying his best, swinging his machete around with reckless abandon, and Dean looks much the same. Castiel, with his renewed grace, moves with poise and precision. He doesn’t miss as he uses his angel blade and occasionally smites vampires left and right.

And Dean can’t take his eyes off of him. He’s seen it a thousand times before, he knows how good Castiel is in a fight, but this is _different_. He has permission to see it differently now.

Which means a vamp gets him in a hold, gripping him by his head and trying to bend his neck just so. Dean is struggling, flailing with his blade, trying to get a hit but he’s overwhelmed. He glances at Sam who is fending off his own opponent and he can’t even see Castiel anymore. He’s going to get his throat ripped out. He’s going to bleed out into this vampire’s mouth and he’s going to die here.

But then he hears a calm, low and tempered instruction from his side: “Stay still, Dean.”

It feels like an age between the vamp grabbing him and Castiel’s calm request but in reality, it is seconds. And in the next he’s covered in vamp blood, but the hold on him is gone. Castiel stands to the side with a shotgun in his hand, still hot from the accurate shot that has blown the head clean off of the vampire in question, the one that was about to kill Dean. Sam has seen off his own vamp, but it doesn’t matter. Dean hears some quiet praise from Sam, from somewhere behind him, telling Castiel he did a good job, but the words feel hollow. They’re not good enough.

Castiel is standing before him, head slightly tilted, vampire blood all over his trenchcoat and t-shirt, hair falling all over the place and stubble a few days old smattered across his slightly perturbed face. “Dean?” he asks when Dean can’t look away. It’s embarrassing, really.

_The one thing I want is something I know I can’t have._

But now things _are_ going to change.

“Thanks, Cas,” Dean murmurs, breathless, as he moves closer, urgently, grabs Castiel and presses his mouth insistently to his. Dean’s hands clamour for the trenchcoat’s lapels and use them to pull Castiel even closer. He feels Castiel try to gasp for breath before he pushes Dean back into the wall he was just pinned to by the vampire, kissing him back just as desperately.

Castiel pulls back after a moment, dragging his teeth across Dean’s lower lip as he does, and stares at him, searching his eyes for _something_. Dean gives a tiny nod, mouth open, gaping, before reaching for Castiel’s face and pulling him closer, his lips meeting Castiel’s again, quickly and crushing and it feels like nothing he’s ever felt before. Castiel grips onto Dean’s sleeve so tight Dean wonders if he might rip the fabric. But it’s the ease at which this is happening that trips Dean’s mind the most. He doesn’t care that Castiel is an angel, a man, anything, really. He just cares that he loves him and wants him. Years of torturing himself boil down to this simple moment, this simple revelation, and it feels like the biggest win in the world.

 _This_ is the ultimate win.

This is what Dean has been chasing.

This is the freedom Dean thought he was fighting for, the free will he earned.

Lips sliding over lips, warm breath on mouths and chins, foreheads resting gently on another, and his thumb brushing under his eye as he kisses him a little gentler than before, with a little less desperation, but he can feel the want building in his stomach, feel the need growing with every second.

His other hand is caressing Castiel’s hip, which is pressed hard into Dean’s body, fingertips grazing his waistband, but suddenly he feels like a schoolboy, like a teenager with his first crush. He can feel it all the way down to his toes and he wants nothing more than to press back into Castiel, to keep pressing, moving, colliding until he feels nothing but relief. Until he feels Castiel breathe, relax, fall into him…

But. Sam is still in the room.

He presses another kiss to Castiel’s mouth and runs his thumb over his cheek.

“Let’s clean this mess up and go home,” Dean announces to the room, stepping out of the tiny space still left between Castiel and himself. He doesn’t look at Sam, but he can hear the barely stifled chuckling, he can see the grin from the corner of his eye as they pick up their weapons, and he hears the contented sigh when Castiel leads them from the room, back to the Impala. And it feels okay. And it feels good.

Dean feels the weight sitting heavy on his chest ease with every passing minute and as he closes the trunk and Sam pats him on the back, it vanishes completely.

He thinks of his dad for a second, what he would have made of it.

But as he folds himself into the Impala, finds Castiel in the passenger seat and Sam already asleep in the back, he finds that he really doesn’t care.

He grabs Castiel’s hand and presses a kiss to his knuckles before shifting into gear and driving on home.

And when Sam scarpers to his room as soon as they get back to the bunker, Dean lets himself smile, easy and peaceful, free, sparing a glance to the clouds before he drags Castiel by the lapels into his bedroom.

***

The next day he finds Sam praying in Jack’s room. Dean hesitates before knocking on the doorframe. Part of him wants to run away before Sam sees him, but another part is curious – what does his brother pray to their three-year old deity about?

“It’s kind of stupid,” Sam says into the silence. “But I feel like he might hear me a little clearer if I’m in here.”

Dean takes the invitation and sits on the two-seat bench across from the bed.

“It’s not stupid.”

“No,” Sam agrees. “It is wishful thinking, though.”

“He’s listening,” Dean says. “I pray to him too.”

“Really?”

Dean nods.

“What about?”

Dean laughs a little and shrugs. “Nothing much. Just little things, like when I think about how much he’d love Miracle or when I find a cool new TV show that I know he’d spend an entire weekend watching.”

“Ah,” Sam smiles. “Mine now seem a little more existential.”

“He was Jack before he was god,” Dean says, with an air of acceptance. “I figure he’s still in there somewhere. He helped us get Cas back.”

“I know,” Sam says.

“What’s got you in the praying mood, anyway?”

Sam smiles and turns to face Dean. He settles his hands on his lap and Dean knows this will be serious.

“I’m asking Eileen to move in,” Sam says, and then hurriedly: “Properly. Not like whatever she’s been doing until now.”

“‘Whatever she’s been doing’ meaning staying here five nights a week and spending the other two days a week in the library nerding out with you?”

Sam laughs and has the decency to blush a little bit.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Sam says. “Do you think I should ask or just clear a drawer for her and give her a key?”

Dean laughs hard until Sam laughs too.

It seems utterly absurd that these are the troubles in their lives now. That Dean gets to be a normal big brother, gets to share bad relationship advice and tease his little brother relentlessly. There are no thinly veiled undertones of life-threatening monsters or demon deals or twisted angels, no apocalypses, or prophecies. He doesn’t have to throw his life on the line for Sam anymore. He’s not his parent. He’s his brother. He’s his friend.

And they’re laughing about Sam asking his girlfriend to move in.

“Okay,” Dean starts. “Rule number one: don’t ask me for relationship advice. Rule number two: you know Eileen better than anyone, Sammy. You know if she’ll want the big gesture.”

“I think she would.”

“Then go for it,” Dean smiles. “Throw that key in a box, get down on one knee and ask her to join us in the finest, cheapest real estate in all of America”

Sam nods, then screws his face up. “Yeah, maybe not like that. But thank you. I will.”

And something shifts and Dean feels younger and Sam feels wiser and god, if that doesn’t make Dean feel _nervous_.

“You and Cas,” Sam starts. Dean expects a smirk, or a joke, or something. But Sam is entirely earnest in his attempt to have this conversation. And Dean is so tired of hiding and pretending and pushing everything down.

“Yeah,” he sighs in gentle acknowledgement.

“I’m really happy for you, Dean,” Sam smiles, honestly.

And Dean has to ask, he has to know.

“You’re not surprised?”

“No,” Sam laughs. “You guys have a ‘more profound bond’, remember? I don’t know if Cas knew what he was talking about then, but he wasn’t wrong.”

“No, he wasn’t,” Dean teases in his most absurd voice, wiggling his eyebrows, incredibly pleased with himself and delighting in the disgust that immediately shows on Sam’s face.

“Alright, Dean, enough,” Sam laughs and holds his hand up to stop the conversation. And then, after a moment: “Feels good to win, doesn’t it?”

“Sure does, Sammy,” Dean stands, pats Sam on the shoulder and makes to leave. “Tell Jack I said ‘hi’.”

***

Eileen moves in two weeks later. Two weeks after Dean stood in a pool of dead vampires and kissed Castiel for the first time. Two weeks after everything just snapped right into place and he stepped right on into the paradise Jack promised. And it’s a simple affair – Eileen is calm as she dumps her belongings on the map table and signs orders to Sam, but Sam is mostly flustered. He’s red, he’s anxious, but he has a smile that not even Eileen’s heaviest boxes can shift and for that, Dean wonders if there is a way of making her stay permanently, come what may.

“Do you think we should help?” Castiel asks, bringing Dean a coffee from the coffee machine Eileen helpfully donated to the bunker. Dean takes the mug, careful not to scald himself and tilts his head up at Castiel from where he sits on the end of the library table, watching Sam’s gentle chaos unfold. Castiel obliges and offers a quick kiss before rolling his eyes. “Bringing you coffee should have been a perk by itself.”

“Maybe,” Dean grins, taking a sip. “And no, we shouldn’t help. They’ve got this.”

“Sam’s face looks incredibly red,” Castiel winces sympathetically, as Sam heaves another box to his room.

“Pull up a seat, Cas. Enjoy the free entertainment while it lasts.”

“This doesn’t seem ethical.”

Sam returns, panting a little. His expression falls as Eileen emerges from the stairs with yet another box.

“It’s not,” Dean laughs, and then laughs harder when Sam flips him off.

Castiel is gazing at him fondly, sliding into Dean’s space and resting an arm around his shoulders, fingers tangling in Dean’s hair, gently soothing, calming, as they watch over the move. On instinct, Dean wraps his arm around Castiel’s waist and pulls him closer still.

“Eileen!” Dean calls over as he puts his coffee down, giving a wave to get her attention. As she turns to look at him, Castiel presses a soft kiss into Dean’s temple. It’s new, and there is no ignoring the pang in Dean’s gut at how _visible_ they are, at how expressive Castiel apparently can be – has probably always been – but the thrill of every kiss offers a relief that washes over his anxieties. He spent so long without this easy affection that allowing himself to receive it has made any and all resistance he ever tried seem trivial and nonsensical. “Is this stuff all yours?”

“Rowena’s” she says back, rolling her eyes. “Sam wants to catalogue everything properly.”

Dean’s eyes widen and he immediately stands up straight, pulling Castiel along with him, coffee long abandoned. “Run,” is the only instruction he gives Castiel before they take off through the back of the library and find their way to Dean’s bedroom.

“Are Rowena’s belongings cursed?” Castiel asks as soon as the door is closed and locked, and Dean has thrown himself back on the bed. “Sam and Eileen are out there!”

“Relax,” Dean says calmly, with a mischievous smirk, as he sits up. “Eileen mentioned cataloguing and I can think of a thousand different things we should be doing instead.”

And finally, Castiel does relax. His shoulders loosen and as he rolls his eyes, his neck loses its tension. “A thousand?” he questions.

“A thousand.”

“Prove it.”

The thrill of Castiel flirting is still novel and Dean delights in it. He lifts himself from the bed with ease, practically floats to Castiel before pushing him against the door and pressing the gentlest of kisses to his lips, hands resting on Castiel’s waist, pushing his shirt up ever so slightly in their race to touch his skin. “That’s the first.”

“I don’t know,” Castiel smiles as they separate. “I think I’d rather catalogue with Sam.”

Dean collapses back on his bed, hands under his head, smirk permanently painted onto his face. “Really? Mr ‘Dean-is-the-best-person-in-the-whole-world-and-I-want-him-so-badly’ thinks he’s funny now?”

Within seconds, Castiel is on the bed, straddling Dean’s lap with his hand over Dean’s mouth to shut him up. And Dean is still smiling. “That’s not quite what I said, is it Dean?”

Dean shakes his head, but the shit-eating grin remains.

“I do want you, though,” Castiel says quietly, leaning down to press a soft kiss to Dean’s shoulder, his neck, his cheek, and then finally, a bruising, desperate kiss to Dean’s mouth as he removes his hand, barely allowing him to catch his breath.

As Castiel pulls away from the kiss, his hand travels down Dean’s body leaving goosebumps in its wake, settling between them as Castiel palms Dean through his pyjama pants and Dean’s hips buck to meet him.

That’s when Dean finally whispers, breathless but satisfied: “This is the second thing. 998 to go.”

***

They don’t have a conversation about it.

Dean doesn’t really talk about anything. It just sort of happens.

After months of Eileen living in the bunker, Castiel moving into Dean’s room, and Sam building a new hunter network, Dean finds himself hunting less and less and no one says a damn word about it.

Dean knows there is something in the network growing and new, young, capable hunters springing up all over the country feeling like it’s less urgent for _him_ to be on the frontline, for Castiel to have to continue fighting the way he does. But for all that Dean has spent his life fighting for Sam to have the chance to stop, no one wants to talk when it’s apparent that Dean is, day by day, finding his own happy ever after away from the monsters.

That Dean did apply for jobs and has attended a couple of interviews, that he does occasionally fix up the locals’ cars for cash-in-hand while Sam and Eileen chase packs of werewolves out of town three states away, while Castiel updates the bunker’s records on heaven and angels and fuck, the Empty. He archives Nick’s spell with Sam’s amendments, and leaves a vial of his own blood with it… just in case.

“I don’t want to hunt full-time anymore,” Dean says into the Dean Cave one day, Sam lying on the floor with Miracle, and Castiel in the other recliner, lying back with the footrest out and chair tilted back. No one points out that he hasn’t hunted full-time in a long time, that Dean stepped into the world he wants long before he was ready to speak about it. But as he says it, the tension he’s been holding back leaves him and it’s easy. It’s easy to admit now.

They’ve already won their battle.

“What are you going to do?” Sam asks, ruffling the fur between Miracle’s ears.

Dean thinks about it. He has no clue. He doesn’t know how to live a real life with a house and a job and bills and neighbours and…

But, with a smile, he knows what he wants right now.

“Right now? I want to go to the beach,” he says, quietly. “I don’t want to only see the ugly parts of the world anymore.”

“Then let’s go,” Castiel says, nonplussed, inviting himself along without being asked. It feels like an improvement and Dean wants to savour it.

He doesn’t have to ask Castiel to stay.

Because Castiel isn’t leaving without him.

“Send me a postcard when you get there,” Sam sighs.

Within three days, the Impala is packed, hugs are exchanged, and they take off without a plan or a schedule and only one goal. They’ll be back at the bunker one day, and Dean hasn’t seen his last hunt, but this is the break he’s earned. This is the break he fought so hard for.

***

Dean slams his foot on the clutch and shifts gear, immediately pressing on the gas to gain more speed, speed, speed. The road is empty before him, nothing but grassy hills and trees on one side and California coastline on the other. It’s not a trip he ever thought he would take but here he is, car growling below him, Castiel next to him in a loose shirt and sunglasses that they’d picked up in some coastal town in Oregon, Miracle half on his lap and half on the seat, and the smell of fresh sea air flowing through the open windows.

He presses the gas harder as the beach comes into view. The suitcases on the backseat rattle as they shake but Dean is calm. Dust flies up from the wheels as they keep turning and Dean keeps a steady foot on the pedal.

He still can’t see anyone. He only sees Castiel, arm resting out the open window, watching the sun set before them without a care in the world, his other hand in Miracle’s fur soothing him.

This is Dean’s dream, but he hopes Castiel doesn’t mind. He hopes he wants this too.

Clutch, gear shift, gas, gas, gas, and finally the beach is before them. He slams the brakes and is out of the door before the engine has had a chance to calm. He gives the Impala a courtesy pat on the hood as he rounds the car, grasps at Castiel’s hand, who has Miracle’s lead, and pulls them to the sand.

He kicks off his shoes and revels in the heat he feels between his toes. _Finally._

“Is this what you wanted, Dean?” Castiel asks, smiling next to him, utterly unfazed by the sensation or the appeal.

Castiel has a sunset glow shining on him, glinting in his hair, catching on his face, and Dean thinks, _yes, this is everything I ever wanted_ , but it’s not enough.

So, what comes out instead, softer than he intended, is: “I love you.”

“Dean-”

“I do, I’m in stupid love with you.”

“I know,” Castiel grins, fully understanding his own reference and thoroughly enjoying Dean’s eyes light up when he realises.

_I love you._

Castiel steps over to him, pulls him close, and presses a kiss on his mouth without even thinking. Because every kiss had been in private until now. Every touch confined to the bunker.

But here, in this utopia of Dean’s own devising, toes in the sand and basking in the heat of a summer sunset, Dean kisses Castiel back and holds him as tight as he can. As they separate, Dean kisses Castiel’s temple and holds him as they watch the sea go out, arms around his shoulders, Castiel’s arm around his waist, and the sun moving lower and lower and lower.

“Alright,” Dean sighs, content and enthusiastic, after several moments. “Let’s go find a bar that gives you little umbrellas in your drinks.”

And so, they do.


End file.
